How to use Sales Navigator on LinkedIn to generate leads

LinkedIn are terrible at marketing and communicating what Sales Navigator can do for sales and marketing professionals. Every time I do a presentation or I do a demonstration people are amazed and inspired about what LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator can do for them to generate leads for them.

So here is my guide to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator (SN):

You can start a free trial or find Sales Navigator here under the strange work set up 9 buttons on your top right of your screen.

Then you can create up to 15 target lists by using Lead Builder and selecting any criteria that you wish to identify your prospects including keywords, title/position of the person, company name, industry, city, country, size of company, experience of the person, 1st, 2nd or 3rd connection, years in job, school, university etc etc, literally everything that is imputed into LinkedIn by you can be used by SN to find someone:

The target lists can be saved or unsaved and used immediately. You can save them and they appear here:

Once the target lists have been set up they will give you daily leads. If I connect with someone I can get access to their 1st connections, they become my second connections. Their 2nd connections become my 3rd connections. That's the New Results list above. This constantly adds to your over all list which is on the left under the title of the search.

If people on LinkedIn happen to fulfill my saved search criteria they will come up and LinkedIn will then tell me about them and I can then contact them.

If people on LinkedIn happen to change countries and they fulfill my criteria then LinkedIn will then tell me about them.

If people on LinkedIn happen to change roles and they fulfill my criteria then LinkedIn will tell me about them.

If they join LinkedIn and fulfill my criteria then LinkedIn will then tell me about them.

Then when I look at the search I have created I can then see who of those people are actually active. As you can see only 20% in this search are actually posting. So they are therefore more likely to reply to a message. It can be worse in some countries and better in others.

If you combine that fact with people who are premium members (i.e. they have actually bought the service so therefore are more motivated to use it and look at it), open profile members (who you can only see on Sales Navigator) and whom have said that they wished to be communicated to and people who have many shared connections with you then you have 4 data points where people are going to at least see your message and will reply if interested.

The other 80% are effectively a waste of time. They’re not even using LinkedIn so why waste an inmail or open link message to them?

Ah yes there are so many ways to message people on LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator that LinkedIn don’t tell you about:

• Open Profile messages: unlimited and only seen on Sales Navigator, see below how to identify someone on SN - the little red and blue dotted circle next to the name, only seen on SN. You can target Eduardo and not Darius for free using this service.

• Inmails: you get 15 on basic LinkedIn and basic Sales Navigator but you get 30 on Sales Navigator Team and LinkedIn Premium Professional
• Invitations: find them on Sales Navigator and send them a personalised sales message up to 250 characters

You can always find people on LinkedIn and communicate with them.

On Sales Navigator you can also see who has changed jobs in your search and you can send them a personalised message about it.

On Sales Navigator you can also see who have been mentioned in the news in the last 30 days and you can personalise messages to them.

On Sales Navigator you can also see who is following your company page and clearly they are already engaging with your content and therefore potentially easier to engage with a personalised message.

On Sales Navigator you can also see who has shared interests with you, which means groups and doesn’t necessarily mean they are active on LinkedIn.

All the data you input into LinkedIn to register your profile in used by Sales Navigator to help you find the right person to communicate your sales message with.

The other great thing about Sales Navigator is the ability to save leads of your prospects and use the data that LinkedIn tell you about them everyday to socially them.

For example I can tell if my leads have changed jobs or/and posted on LinkedIn and I can then comment, share and like and they will then be sent a notification saying that I have commented, shared and liked their post. Social Selling. I’m selling without selling.

I can see if my saved leads have appeared in the news and then learn about that and comment, share, like and tag them.

LinkedIn will suggest new leads based on my existing saved leads.

I can also see of the companies that my saved leads work for share content or appear in the news. Again allowing me to comment, share, like and tag leads and learn more about what those companies are doing which you can bring up in future meetings and on line.

Sales Navigator is the essential sales and marketing tool on LinkedIn. Use it and you too can win new clients.

It's especially effectively when visiting new countries and cities. I regularly set up dozens of meetings across by using Sales Navigator to identify and target specific targets who are active on LinkedIn in any city in any country in the world.

If you want a free personalised consultation on how you can specifically use LinkedIn and LinkedIn's Sales Navigator to generate leads contact me on LinkedIn (as I am of course an Open Profiler) or email [email protected].