What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator & How Does it Work?

Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s platform for sales teams that facilitates virtual selling on LinkedIn by empowering salespeople to build and manage client relationships backed by LinkedIn’s data and advanced sales tools.

In essence, Sales Navigator allows businesses to learn more about their target customers and then implement holistic strategies to communicate and connect with these prospects. It’s ideal for building relationships with customers and clients at scale, especially when paired with a CRM tool like Salesforce.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain why the tool is beneficial, how much it costs and how you can pair it with our CRM to drive outstanding outcomes.

The core offering of the Sales Navigator application is its ability to help you discover leads, build relationships, and optimise your outreach at scale. It offers several exciting features, including:

• Advanced search: Customisable search filters and sales preferences, allowing sales professionals to hone in on their perfect lead based on industry, region, function and seniority levels.
• Unlimited network searching: To cap off the advanced filtering, Sales Navigator offers unlimited lead searches across LinkedIn’s entire global network
• InMail Messaging: Advanced messaging features that make it easier to hold personalised, data-driven conversations with prospects.
• TeamLink: For Advanced or Advanced Plus Sales Navigator users, you can also access TeamLink. This feature displays all registered members of your team who are closely connected to the lead, giving you insight into who is best suited to support your communications.
• Sales Spotlight: LinkedIn’s Sales Spotlight feature will automatically highlight top results and noteworthy leads, such as those that are active on the site or share common experiences with your brand.
• Easy integration: Sales Navigator syncs up seamlessly with other sales tech, including CRMs like Salesforce — giving you all of the real-time data you

If the extensive list of features wasn’t enough, here are five reasons you should consider adding Sales Navigator to your tech stack.

• Automatic recommendations: Once you define your preferred criteria, Sales Navigator will automatically recommend leads. This saves you time and helps you fill your sales pipeline with qualified more efficiently.
• Lead generation features: Rather than relying on intuition to discover leads who are most likely to convert, Sales Navigator automates this process through data, giving you actionable insights at every stage of the sales process.
• Enhanced reach: Sales Navigator breaks through your network limitations, letting you connect with decision-makers and generate leads easily, even if you don’t have any prior LinkedIn connections.
• Scalability: Sales Navigator is all about flexibility. It’ll scale up as your business grows. You can sort all of your prospects into custom lists, making it easy to keep tabs as you hone your sales pipeline.

Seamless syncing: One of the best parts about LinkedIn’s flagship sales product is that it integrates flawlessly with solutions like Salesforce. This supports automation, efficiency, and productivity.

There are three Sales Navigator plans available to you, each with its own degree of complexity and available features.

• Sales Navigator Core is best for individual sales professionals. It currently costs $109.99 per month or with a 15% discount if paid annually.
• Sales Navigator’s Advanced package is ideal for sales teams. It comes in at $169.99 per month or with a 21% discount if billed annually.
• Sales Navigator Advanced Plus is the most feature-rich package for teams and enterprises. You’ll need to request a free demo and speak to a sales specialist from LinkedIn.

Each of these three packages will also give you access to 50 private messages each month via InMail. You can use these to reach out to top prospects directly.

The real benefit of choosing the Advanced and Advanced Plus packages is the ability to integrate your Sales Navigator solution with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. The Embedded Experiences feature with Advanced Plus is particularly powerful, offering accurate insights into prospects — all from within your CRM.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide to get started with Sales Navigator and LinkedIn prospecting tools.

Sign up for Sales Navigator and find the plan that’s the best fit for your business. To get your CRM integrated, you’ll need to opt for the Advanced or Advanced Plus plan.

A persona helps you source leads that match your ideal customer profile. Set one up by heading to Personas, then Create new Persona. You can then fill in all relevant fields.

Save any existing targets to Sales Navigator by going to Account filters+ and searching for the leads you’re prospecting. You can then click save into your account lists.

With the basics sorted, you’re ready to start finding leads. There are a few ways to do this.

One option is to conduct an advanced search under the Lead filters+ section. From there, you can select your filters to narrow down your results and find high-quality leads most likely to convert. If you prefer, you can also apply your personas as a search filter to instantly find leads that align with your target audience.

Once you’ve found a lead, you can add it to your list and track it over time. Sales Navigator will then send you alerts when that lead completes an action or makes a move, such as changing jobs.

Next, it’s time to research your leads and find the best ‘warm path’ to engage. You can click on an ‘account and lead’ to ‘view all essential information’ about them, including your shared experiences.

If you’d like to connect with a lead, you can do so through LinkedIn InMails. This allows you to write personalised messages that highlight mutual connections and traits.

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Salesforce, you can view all of your LinkedIn info and insights directly from within your CRM solution. This makes your whole sales process even more efficient, unifying all of your customer data and LinkedIn features under one roof.

To get started, you’ll need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced or Advanced Plus subscription, as well as full admin access to your Salesforce account. We won’t dive into how to install Sales Navigator for Salesforce in this guide. But if you’d like to learn more, here’s our comprehensive Salesforce Sales Navigator integration guide.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways you’ll benefit from syncing Sales Navigator with your CRM.

Sales Navigator’s integration with Salesforce eliminates the inefficient task of manually importing LinkedIn leads into Salesforce. All of your customer data will be automatically synchronised in one central database, saving your sales team time and reducing errors.

The Sales Navigator integration will push updates from LinkedIn in real time. This lets you view job changes, promotions, and company news directly within Salesforce — meaning your sales reps will receive instant, actionable insights that they can use to pitch personalised solutions.

Sales Navigator will enrich Salesforce customer records with LinkedIn profile data, including AI-powered account IQ overviews and TeamLink connections. This boosts the comprehensiveness of contextual information, giving your sales reps a more advanced overview of every lead.

With more accurate, information-rich customer records, sales teams can streamline the customer research process and have more time to hone in on the best approach to lead targeting based on available data.

All in all, integrating Sales Navigator into Salesforce provides more accurate data and actionable insights, providing pathways to develop buyer relationships. All of this culminates in better customer experiences, a stronger sales pipeline, and a sales team that understands exactly what they need to do to connect and communicate with each prospect.

Here are five best practices for getting the most out of Sales Navigator:

Before you start your search, define your ideal prospect’s profile in the persona section. You need to instruct Sales Navigator what you’re looking for so it can match you with best-fit leads.

One of the top sales tips on the web? Always prioritise leads who are most likely to convert. Use filters wisely to identify high-priority prospects based on their recent activity, shared interests, experiences you share, and past interactions.

Once you’ve found a lead, use the basic info and account IQ feature to your advantage. The more data you can gather on your lead, the easier it will be to personalise your approach and get the ball rolling.

You only get a maximum of 50 InMail messages per month, so it’s important to use these sparingly. It’s much better to use these for qualified leads that have a much higher chance of responding.

The shared experiences feature displays commonalities between you and your lead. Leverage this feature to the fullest and use it to build rapport with your prospects.

Let’s round off this guide with three common challenges of using Sales Navigator and tips to overcome them.

The best place to start if you’re struggling to find leads is to narrow down your search criteria. Use the Advanced Search feature to choose seniority level, industry, company size, and geography. You can also use boolean searches to include specific keywords and exclude irrelevant results.

If you’re finding that prospects aren’t biting on your outreach strategies, consider whether you’re personalising your approach effectively. Your sales reps first port of call should be a warm introduction that references shared connections, mutual interests, or recently posted content the prospect has published. You should also remember to keep InMail concise and include a clear CTA.

Another common challenge with Sales Navigator is that it can be difficult to measure success. To overcome this, set clear goals and KPIs from the outset, such as InMail response rates, meetings booked, and deals closed. You can then use analytics to measure performance. This is especially powerful if you integrate with a CRM like Salesforce.

Sales Navigator is one of the most powerful LinkedIn automation tools for discovering prospects and converting leads. Advanced search functionality, AI-driven recommendations and personalised messaging all add up to one thing: a direct path to finding leads that drive measurable results for your business.

The key to getting the most out of Sales Navigator is pairing it with an outstanding CRM solution. With Salesforce and Sales Navigator integration, you can combine all of your customer data under one roof, making your social selling efforts more efficient while keeping your B2B sales teams productive and informed.

And, once you’ve synced up the platforms, you’ll be able to combine LinkedIn data with Salesforce’s suite of email marketing tools to deliver personalised, scalable campaigns that engage your subscribers and elevate your ROI. Try Salesforce Marketing Cloud for free today to learn more.