LinkedIn Sales Navigator Explained

Social selling has revolutionized the way sales are conducted, simplifying the process of engaging with potential clients and naturally uncovering new leads. LinkedIn, known as the go-to social network for professional connections and interactions, has consistently been a valuable and successful resource for identifying and cultivating sales prospects.

Interested in boosting your B2B sales and marketing strategies? Let’s explore an important feature on LinkedIn that can help: the Sales Navigator. Sometimes, we don’t need third-party applications or tools, LinkedIn’s very own in-built features are equally impressive when utilized properly. The Sales Navigator is specifically designed for business growth and effective lead generation. Here’s our 101 on what it is exactly.

LinkedIn offers both free and subscription-based options, including specialized plans for recruiters, job seekers, professionals, and now, sales representatives. Imagine your very own personal digital sales assistant. It is a sales management tool that enables sales representatives to utilize LinkedIn’s vast network more efficiently to secure more successful and high-quality business opportunities.

Let’s explore some of its core features.

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SALES NAVIGATOR FEATURES DECODED

Sales Navigator offers some really useful premium features across its different plans.

When you subscribe to the core plan, you get the following:

• 50 InMail messages each month
• The ability to save up to 10,000 leads
• Advanced searching for leads and companies
• Creating your own lists
• Alerts about leads and accounts
• Adding notes and tags

InMail messages are super handy for salespeople looking for new leads, as you can’t send messages to people outside your network with the free LinkedIn version. Sales Navigator lets you contact potential leads you’re not connected with, helping you find and build new relationships. The core plan also lets you do advanced searches, save important leads, make custom lists, and keep notes or tags on leads and accounts, making it simpler to manage your sales pipeline.

The Advanced plan includes everything in the core plan, plus:

• TeamLink and TeamLink Extend
• Tools for team collaboration
• Integrations with your profile
• Smart Links

With the Advanced plan, you can use TeamLink to see and search your team’s connections, helping you find contacts connected to a prospect. This opens the door for a warmer, more personal introduction rather than a cold outreach. TeamLink Extend lets you see your direct team’s connections and those of other employees in your company who opt to share their network. This significantly broadens your reach within the network, increasing the chances of finding a mutual connection.

Tools for Team Collaboration are designed to enhance teamwork within Sales Navigator. You can share lists of leads and accounts with your team members, making it easier to distribute work or collaborate on specific projects. It also includes conducting joint searches, where team members can contribute to and refine a shared search for leads or accounts.

Sales Navigator’s Advanced plan allows for more seamless integration with your LinkedIn profile, keeping your professional brand consistent and up-to-date to reflect your most recent sales efforts and successes.

Smart Links provide a sophisticated way to share content with your prospects. When you send documents or presentations through Smart Links, you get detailed analytics on how the recipients interact with your content. This insight is invaluable for understanding your prospects’ interests and engagement levels, allowing you to tailor your follow-up communications more effectively.

The Advanced Plus plan also combines the best of both Core and Advanced and is great for teams of 10 or more:

• Integrations with CRM systems
• Data validation
• Reporting on ROI

Integrations with CRM Systems allow for seamless integration between Sales Navigator and various Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. It helps in synchronizing sales data between the two platforms, ensuring that all client interactions and information are updated and accessible in both Sales Navigator and CRM. It is particularly useful for sales teams as it reduces the need for manual data entry and helps maintain a consistent and comprehensive view of customer interactions across different platforms.

Data validation ensures that the information sales teams use is accurate and up-to-date.

This is crucial for maintaining the sales pipeline’s quality and effective targeting. It reduces the chances of reaching out to outdated contacts and ensures that the sales efforts are focused on viable leads with correct and verified information.

The Advanced Plus plan offers enhanced reporting capabilities, focusing specifically on the return on investment (ROI) from using Sales Navigator. ROI reporting tools provide insights into metrics such as how many leads were converted into customers, the value of sales generated through leads from Sales Navigator, and the overall impact of Sales Navigator on the sales pipeline and revenue to justify investment in the tool.

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BEST PRACTICES FOR LEAD GENERATION WITH SALES NAVIGATOR

Now that you know the importance and value of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, let’s move on to a practical step-by-step guide to maximize its capabilities in lead generation.

Step 1: Set Up Your Account

Sign Up: Subscribe to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Choose a plan that suits your needs.

Profile Setup: Ensure your profile is professional and reflective of your role. For example, highlight your expertise in technology solutions if you’re in tech sales.

Step 2: Define Your Target Audience

Identify Ideal Leads: Consider the characteristics of your ideal leads, such as industry (e.g., healthcare), job title (e.g., IT Manager), company size (e.g., 200-500 employees), and location (e.g., San Francisco).

Use Advanced Search: Filter profiles that match your criteria. For instance, search for “IT Managers” in “Healthcare” companies based in “San Francisco”.

Step 3: Save Leads and Accounts

Save Prospects: As you find potential leads, like “John Doe, IT Manager at HealthTech Inc.”, use the ‘Save’ feature to add them to your leads list.

Create Custom Lists: Organize your saved leads into lists, such as “San Francisco Healthcare IT Managers”.

Step 4: Engage with Your Leads

Send InMail: Reach out to leads with personalized InMail messages. For example, mention a recent article they published or a mutual interest.

Engage on LinkedIn: Like and comment on your prospects’ posts. For instance, if “John Doe” shares an industry article, leave a thoughtful comment.

Step 5: Utilize Sales Navigator Tools

Use TeamLink: Discover if anyone in your network is connected to “John Doe” for a warmer introduction.

Track Lead and Account Alerts: Stay informed about updates like “John Doe promoted to Senior IT Manager”.

Step 6: Monitor and Analyze

Check Smart Links (if available): Share an insightful tech report with a prospect and see if they engage with it.

Review Your Progress: Regularly check your interactions with leads like “John Doe” to gauge interest.

Step 7: Refine Your Strategy

Adjust Searches: If IT Managers in healthcare are responsive, you might expand to “Finance Managers” in the same industry.

Follow-Up: Send follow-up messages to “John Doe” after initial contact, perhaps commenting on a recent company announcement.

Step 8: Integrate with CRM (if applicable)

Sync with CRM: Link Sales Navigator with your CRM to maintain updated information on leads like “John Doe”.

Step 9: Report and Evaluate

Generate Reports: Analyze the success rate of your InMail messages and the overall engagement of your saved leads.

Step 10: Continuous Learning

Stay Informed: Keep up with new Sales Navigator features to improve strategies for engaging leads in specific sectors like healthcare IT.

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SALES NAVIGATOR BEST PRACTICES

Now that we have got you updated with a 101 on Sales Navigator, you should maximize your potential by adopting a series of strategic best practices. This approach involves integrating the platform intelligently into your daily sales operations. These best practices are designed to enhance your proficiency with helping you achieve greater success in your digital sales efforts.

• Customize Your Outreach Efforts: Rather than sending the same message to everyone, make each message unique for each person you contact. Get to know their profile, what they do, and where they work. By making your messages personal, you show that you’ve put effort into understanding them, which can make them more likely to respond positively.

• Conduct Detailed Research and Craft Tailored Messages: Take the time to learn about each lead’s business and the challenges they face in their industry. Use what you learn to make your messages more relevant to them. This way, you show that you care about meeting their needs and interests.

• Identify and Address Prospects’ Challenges: Find out the main problems or challenges your potential clients are dealing with. Then, adjust your messages to discuss these challenges and offer helpful solutions or ideas. Doing this shows you know your stuff and makes you a useful contact in their professional circle.

• Start with Customized Templates: Create custom template messages to begin your conversations. Make sure these templates can be easily changed to fit each person’s specific background and what they need. This way, you can save time but still keep your messages personal for each person you talk to.

• Foster Relationships Through Continuous Engagement: Forming and keeping up good relationships is important. Stay in touch with potential clients by liking their posts, leaving comments, or sharing things they might find interesting. Keeping this connection going helps them remember you and builds a friendly relationship, which could help make sales later.

• Regularly Analyze and Improve Your Strategies: Keep an eye on how well your messages and interactions are working. Use the analytics in Sales Navigator to see how you’re doing. Use what you learn from this to improve at finding prospects, writing messages, and building relationships.

By following these best practices, you can effectively utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator to enhance your lead generation and sales efforts, building stronger professional relationships and increasing your chances of sales success.

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SALES NAVIGATOR PRICING

LinkedIn Sales Navigator comes in three different plans: Core, Advanced, and Advanced Plus. Depending on the size of your team and what you’re aiming to achieve, one of these plans will suit your needs. You can choose between paying monthly or annually for each plan, and a free trial or demo is available for each.* Paying month by month is a bit more costly compared to paying for a whole year at once. Remember, if you go for the annual plan, it will last until the end of the year you’ve paid for, even if you cancel.

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IS SALES NAVIGATOR WORTH MY INVESTMENT?

Determining whether Sales Navigator is a worthy investment for you hinges on several key factors. Firstly, assess your specific sales goals and the size of your target market. If you’re in a field where LinkedIn is a primary platform for professional networking, and your target audience is active on this platform, Sales Navigator can be particularly beneficial.

Additionally, consider the scale of your sales operations. For individual sales professionals or smaller teams, the tool’s advanced search and lead-tracking capabilities can significantly streamline the lead-generation process. Collaboration features and CRM integration can enhance team efficiency and data management for larger teams or enterprises.

It’s also important to evaluate your current lead generation challenges and see if Sales Navigator’s features align with your needs, such as reaching out to leads outside your network or organizing prospects more efficiently.

Lastly, consider the potential return on investment (ROI) by comparing the subscription cost with the value of the leads and relationships you expect to build through the platform. If these aspects align with your sales strategy and the tool addresses your specific challenges effectively, then LinkedIn Sales Navigator could be a valuable addition to your sales toolkit.

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TIME TO REEL IN ALL THE LEADS!

In today’s fast-paced B2B environment, finding the perfect lead generation strategy is challenging, given the multitude of choices at your fingertips. Our blog aims to decode LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator for you, but we recognize that implementing it can be a hefty addition to your already packed schedule – and potentially a source of frustration.

Here’s where Reachly steps in – your ideal partner to unlock the full potential of Sales Navigator without overburdening your workload. As a specialized LinkedIn lead generation agency, Reachly is designed to seamlessly integrate with your business, ensuring you can keep your focus where it matters most: on your core business activities. With Reachly, lead generation becomes less of a chore and more of a strategic asset in your business growth toolkit.

Our team of experts uses the Sales Navigator’s rich sales data in conjunction with our unique REACH™ process. This combination enables us to create targeted lists of qualified prospects that align perfectly with your ideal client profile. We understand the importance of personalization in B2B communications. Therefore, every message we craft and send on your behalf is timely, relevant, trustworthy, and personalized, ensuring your outreach resonates with key decision-makers.

By choosing to work with Reachly, you boost your sales opportunities and concentrate on what you do best – driving growth for your business.

Contact us today for more information and a free consultation – no strings attached.