How to Use Linkedin Sales Navigator (2024 Tutorial)

82% of B2B marketers report that their greatest success comes from Linkedin. With over 1BN users worldwide, Linkedin is undoubtedly the best place for lead generation. However, to get great results, you have to spend your time on the right accounts. This is where Sales Navigator comes in. 

Being one of the top prospecting tools, you can get data and insights that will help you target the right prospects. But how exactly do you get your money’s worth after investing in this tool?

How to Generate Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

To generate leads with your sales navigator account, here’s what this article will cover;

• Use advanced search filters to find new leads
• Create a list with the contacts you’ve identified
• Use the relationship explorer feature to find the right decision-makers and connect with them
• You can also connect with invitation notes and send InMails
• Use features on the sales navigator advanced plans like Teamlink extend and smart links
• Maximize your account by also using it for recruitment
• Automate lead generation with saved searches 
• Combine sales navigator with LinkedIn ads
• Integrate sales navigator with Taplio
• Automate outreach messages with lemlist and LinkedIn sales navigator

How to Build Prospects Contact List with Sales Navigator

Prospecting always starts with getting a list of high-quality leads you want to target. On Sales Navigator, you can automatically search for your ideal customers and group them in your contact list. Here’s how to do that efficiently;

Use the advanced search filters to find new leads

On a regular LinkedIn account, you get 18 filters to help you narrow down who your prospect is. While that might seem like a lot, there are no lead search filters to help you get the list you need.

But on your Sales Navigator account, you have 36 lead filters with an additional 16 filters for account searches giving you more room to narrow down on the accounts that matter.

To find this option, simply;

• Go to your homepage on Sales Navigator
• On the top screen, choose between lead or account filters
• Depending on what you choose you’ll get a list of filters you can use

• Apply the ones you want to help you modify the contacts in the results

The major difference between lead and account filters is that leads focus on specific people while accounts focus on specific companies. So your customer profile will determine what filter category you’ll use. There are also no limits to the number of searches you can make so use this to your advantage. 

Pro Tip
Use the Boolean search operators available to make your list even more specific. Sales Navigator has five of them; AND, OR, NOT, Quotes and Parentheses. You can use these Boolean operators under the Job title filters or the keyword field.

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So for example, in the image above, this search filter is looking for prospects whose job titles are sales managers and sales directors. 

Create different lead lists of your target accounts

Once you have a drop-down of all your target accounts or ideal contacts, segmenting them into a list helps you organize, find and target them even faster. To create a lead list on Sales Navigator simply follow these steps;

• Select the leads or contacts you want to add to your list by tapping on the checkbox beside the contact
• Tap on “Save to List”

• Tap on the “+” in the drop-down to create a new list and name the list
• Your contacts will automatically be moved here. 

When you need to find your lead lists, you’ll see them on the homepage under “Lead lists”

Pro Tip
You can add the same contact to more than one list. However, we recommend not sending messages at the same time if there’s a contact in both sequences to avoid spamming them. To add your contact to more than one list on Sales Navigator, just;

• Create another search or under the same search, select the same contacts
• Tap on “Add to another list”
  

• Click on the “+” icon in the drop-down to create a new list
• Name the list and they’ll automatically be in this list as well.

Find the right decision-makers with relationship explorer

There’s a feature on Sales Navigator called Relationship Explorer. With this feature, you can create a persona of your ideal customer profile using job title, location, and more. 

Based on your ICP, for each new company or account assigned to your team, you immediately get recommendations on the top people you should contact.

• To access this feature, visit the search bar on the homepage and type in an account
• From the dropdown, tap on the target company
• Scroll down and you’ll see a list of spotlights or contacts that you can reach out to

• Once you tap on a specific contact, you’ll get things like shared experiences and other details to help you send a personalized icebreaker
• You can also save these contacts to a list by tapping on the “Save” button next to each one.

Pro Tip

A great way to build your persona is to make a search first and then edit the details of the persona to match your preferred profile

How to Nurture Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once you have your contacts neatly segmented with details you can use for outreach, it's time to reach out to them. At this stage, personalization is an important key to getting results, especially in B2B sales. 

Automation is also helpful in letting you reach all of your saved contacts within a short period. Here’s how to nurture your leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator;

Connect and send InMails

You can reach out to your contacts via connection messages or InMails.

Connection requests help you to bring 2nd or 3rd-degree connections into your inner network. So when they agree to connect, you can see each other’s posts, send messages and more. You can choose to either send a connection request with a note or without one, but we recommend adding one.

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• To send a connection request, next to the contact, tap on “connect”

• Next, tap on “Add a note”

• Enter a brief connection note and then send
• Your contact will receive a connection with your message

LinkedIn InMails on the other hand, is a premium feature that allows you to send messages to leads you do not want to connect with. This feature is especially handy because you cannot send more than 100 connections per week.

So if you need to reach more people within a short period, you should use this. 

To send an InMail, simply follow these steps;

• Visit the contact profile
• Tap on the message button
• Enter your InMail subject and body
• Review and send

Pro Tip

Since connection requests and InMails have character limits, you have to personalize your messages and doing it manually will take forever. We recommend connecting your sales navigator to an outreach tool that will allow you to send personalized messages at scale.

Export Leads and Get Emails

51% of companies today use multiple channels to interact with their customers because it's more effective.

This means while sending Linkedin messages can be a great first approach, nurturing them should involve a multichannel outreach. 

While using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can export your contacts to your CRM or your outreach tool, get email addresses from this export and send even more tailored messages that’ll get you that booking call. Unfortunately, while it’s great, currently, you cannot export contacts on the sales navigator.

To export leads from Sales Navigator, you can use lemlist Chrome Extension. With lemlist, you can use smart enrichment to get their email addresses and even send them multichannel outreach (emails, linkedin messages, cold calls and more) directly from the software.

Here’s how to export your LinkedIn contacts with lemlist;

• Install the lemlist LinkedIn Chrome Extension
• Search for your leads on LinkedIn or select a list from your Sales Navigator
• Export leads one by one, in bulk, or in batches follow the following steps;

1. Scrap leads’ profiles and find their verified emails

i. From individual leads’ profile

ii. In bulk, from LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search

2. Add and edit leads’ data from one spot

3. Push scraped leads to your existing outreach campaign, or create a new campaign for the new leads!

You can also check out which leads are already in your outreach campaigns so you avoid over-prospecting duplicates.

Pro Tip

With lemlist, you can also get email templates and personalize them with custom text, images and even dynamic landing pages.

There’s also an AI email generator that generates custom emails to help you get conversions faster like the one below.

How to Use Sales Navigator Advanced

On the Sales Navigator Advanced Plus plan, there are more features designed to help you improve your sales process. For one, you get access to an additional 50 InMail credits every month. Some you should consider include;

Team Link Extend

With this feature, you can increase the size of your current network with your team. So put simply, your colleagues can see if a lead is connected to you already and can ask you to make an introduction for them. But that’s the only thing they can see on your account. 

The way it works is that you invite other members of your sales team to see your lead connections. Usually, they’ll receive a link via email to join you. To send a TeamLink Extend invitation simply; 

• On the homepage, tap on Admin located at the top
• Tap on ‘Account Center’ and then ‘People’
• Under People, tap on the ‘Users’ tab
• You’ll see all available, pending and activated license invitations you’ve shared

• Next, tap on the number next to ‘Available’
• On the email pop-up window, enter your colleague’s email address
• For multiple users, separate by comma and then Add
• Then select ‘TeamLink Extend License’ and then confirm
• They will be sent an email notification to join.

Smart Links

A smart link is a way for you to group and share content in Sales Navigator. With this feature, you can merge content like your pitch deck, product demos, YouTube videos and more in one link that you can share with your prospects. Once they view your smart link, you can track their viewing behavior and see what exactly they want in your product/service.

To create a smart link, simply follow these steps

• Tap on ‘Smart Links’ at the top of the Sales Navigator homepage (this will only be available on the advanced and advanced plus plans)

• Tap on ‘New Smart Link’ and name the link
• Upload your files to the link or if you prefer, a website

• Tick the checkbox that says ‘Enable recipient to download viewable files’
• Review and tap on ‘Create’
• Copy and share with your prospects

How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Recruiting

Most recruitment teams use either LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator for getting new leads and applicants so it’s definitely useful for recruitment. So if your sales team already has access to Sales Navigator, you can save costs by using it for recruiting. 

With the advanced search filters, you can find specific applicants that match what you’re looking for. So, simply filter based on the job profile or candidate you’re looking for. In the example below, you can tell this filter is looking for senior software engineers. 

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Plus, once you save this search, LinkedIn will automatically update the list to include new candidates that fit your criteria. 

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Next, send a personalized connection request or a message if you’re already a connection, sharing details about the job opening and if they are interested in the role. It’s also helpful if you use a tool like lemlist to help you draft the perfect message. 

Pro Tip

Alternatively, if you want to reach out to multiple candidates, you can use the lemlist Chrome extension to find their emails and send them messages directly from the outreach tool. It’s easier to track who’s interested and who isn’t. 

• From the pop-up, simply tap on ‘push to lemlist’ and select how many candidates you want to move. 
• You can also toggle the ‘Find Email’ button on the right to get their email addresses.

4 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales tool you should maximize in your B2B company. Some more ways to take advantage of this tool for growth include;

1. Automate lead generation with 'saved searches' target alerts

Chances are you’re going to make the same search more than once, and when you use a combination of several filters, it can be hard getting it right again. With saved searches, you can get updated results every day with the same search. To do this;

• After curating your search list, select the contacts on the search results page
• Just under the search bar, click on ‘Save Search’
• You’ll get a notification asking you to name the search, do this and click ‘Save’

• Set alerts (Daily, weekly, monthly, never) depending on your preference and save
• After this, you’ll always find your saved searches next to the search bar

2. Combine Sales Navigator with LinkedIn ads

You can export your leads or prospects from Sales Navigator to LinkedIn Ads for an even more tailored ad strategy. To do this simply follow these steps;

• Extract the contact list from the LinkedIn sales navigator using a Chrome Extension or a third-party tool
• On your LinkedIn account, tap on ‘Work’ and then under marketing ‘Advertise’
• Select your ad account, you’ll be prompted to create one if you don’t have any
• Under ‘Create’ tap on ‘Create New Account’
• Scroll down to audiences and click on ‘List Upload’

• Depending on your list, choose a company or contacts and upload

If you get an error it simply means your file wasn’t modified for LinkedIn’s preferred format. Simply modify the headers on LinkedIn and upload again.

3. Combine  Sales Navigator with Taplio

Cold outreach works better when you have a reputable personal brand. Don’t be a bot. A great way to do this is to interact with the content on your feed and with your connections. 

With Taplio, you can automate leaving comments, DMs and even creating Linkedin posts. Get a list of the best-performing posts in your network, your best-performing posts and more to inform your content creation on the platform. 

In addition to this, you can also import a list of contacts that engage with your content for a wider reach. For even more tailored reach, connect it with your sales navigator account.

• Start by creating a Taplio account
• Once you have an account, go to the settings page and tap on ‘Connect’
• Follow the prompts and that's all.

Alternatively, you can install the Taplio free Chrome extension.

4. Automate outreach messages with lemlist and Sales Navigator

Once you find contacts you want to connect with or reach out to using the sales navigator filters, automate how you reach out to them.

Choose to either focus your outreach strategy on Linkedin through highly personalized messages or export your contacts for a more multi-channel approach like this example below.

Remember, businesses that use two or more channels in a campaign have experienced 166% more engagement rates. Start by duplicating any of the preset campaign templates from other B2B marketers crushing their sales goals.

Conclusion

Linkedin Sales Navigator is a great tool for B2B sales teams and recruiters. Just make sure you’re fully maximizing its potential by using this guide.

Don’t forget to integrate your Linkedin with other tools for success in taking your sales outreach to the next level.