Why you should delete everything and start over

It’s time to make LinkedIn Sales Navigator work for you. In order to do so, you should wipe your existing data clean and build back better.

There’s no better time than the beginning of a new quarter to set yourself up for success. You’ve just spent the last few weeks chasing down buyers, closing deals, updating CRM, and forecasting to leadership. The stress and adrenaline are no joke.

That’s why it’s worth taking a few days in the new quarter to focus on taking care of you. Specifically, great salespeople use quiet time during the start of the quarter to set themselves up for success at the end of the next 90 days.

For digital-savvy sellers, this is where they make Sales Navigator work for them.

In our conversations with prospective customers, we always ask if the sales team has access to Sales Navigator. When it comes to identifying, organizing, and engaging target accounts there’s simply no better tool. But too often, unless sales leadership consistently reinforce usage of it, efforts by Enablement to roll out the technology can go to waste. Worse, Sales Navigator licenses are not at the same price point as a Planet Fitness membership – they’re a premium line item precisely because of the value they can bring.

Whether you’ve been working a bit in Navigator or know you have a license somewhere but haven’t logged in for a while, I’m going to tell you my biggest piece of advice to help you get closer to your number at the end of this quarter.

Step one? Delete everything in your Navigator instance. We’re starting from scratch.

If that sounds scary, don’t worry. Below are the next few steps that will help you build your Navigator instance back better. Account Executive or Business Development Executive, the following steps will help you declutter, organize, and prioritize like an expert.

Once you’ve deleted everything in your Sales Navigator instance, do this:

1. Look up all of your target accounts and save them to an Account List. Be strategic though. Unless you’ve only got a handful of accounts, the likelihood that you’re going to work all of them is quite low. For AE’s, the 25 top accounts that you have leverage in should be your priority. For S/BDRs, do a little math first. Take how many reps you have – let’s say 3 – and figure you’ll work one account per week for each of the 12 weeks of the quarter. 1 account x 3 reps x 12 weeks = 36 accounts.
2. Whereas the AE only needs a single account list, S/BDRs should create a list for each rep you’re helping and save the corresponding accounts to each list.
3. Look up your target buyers in each account and save them to a Leads List. We know there are at least 6-10 people in the average B2B buying process. You know your target buying personas (Decision Makers, Influencers, and Coaches) and the title they occupy. Search for those titles in each one of those accounts and save to a custom lead list. For S/BDRs, don’t forget to have custom leads lists for each rep you’re working with.
4. Observe and react. Now that you have all of your priority target accounts and leads organized, you should be logging in every day for 15 minutes to see what insights and updates Sales Navigator surfaces for you. Unlike LinkedIn.com where your prospects compete for your attention alongside your past and current coworkers, Navigator curates news and posts specific to your accounts and saved leads, enabling you to engage with who’s most important to you making your quarter. Remember that a quick way to get on your prospect’s radar is by engaging with their content and/or thoughtfully personalizing your outreach based on info you gleaned from their social posts, if they’ve been mentioned in the news or a relevant post from their company.

With all of the information, conversations, and tasks that come at sellers every day, the ability to focus and prioritize becomes increasingly critical to our success. In order to help you ascertain who you should be speaking with and what’s most important to them, leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator. To get the most value out of it, make sure your instance is actively set up to work for you. The best way to get it there is to periodically clean out your settings and start fresh. At least twice a year, but ideally every time your accounts change. As hard as you work for your customers, leaders, and organization, you owe yourself the 30-45 minutes it takes to get yourself set up.

For more information on how you can streamline your workflows and better utilize your Sales Navigator instance, reach out any time. We’re only a message away.

Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for more tips, tricks, and hard-earned best practices.

How We Help:

At Empire, our mission is to make every seller more productive and successful, and to bring compassion and transparency back to sales. We achieve this by unifying customer-facing teams around a shared go-to-market and digital engagement strategy that helps build predictable pipeline, expand deal sizes, and shorten sales cycles. If we can be of assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.