7 Insider Tips to Get the Most from LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Large business-to-business purchases go through an average of nearly 7 people on the buyer side — and that’s before a final decision is made. When you’re sailing the “seven seas” of eCommerce, it helps to have a good navigator. Put down that compass — you need LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a tool designed to enhance and facilitate lead communication and tracking on LinkedIn.

Companies that sell B2B or considered purchase products, like automotive or real estate, stand to gain the most from Linkedin Sales Navigator. High-value purchases are more likely to involve a greater number of decision makers and a longer deliberative process. But that’s not all there is to it.

Whether you close a sales deal depends on factors that have a major, quantifiable impact: how you contact decision makers; the knowledge and understanding you are able to demonstrate about their company and its needs; and the informational content you provide them with.

Sales Navigator helps give you access to all this key information. It can give you significant advantages in any sales efforts you conduct over the LinkedIn platform. Let’s take a look at the kind of results you might get, and get some insider tips on using Sales navigator for maximum results.

What Results Does Sales Navigator Get?

You might be wondering if it’s worth bothering with Sales Navigator, especially if you’re perfectly capable of handling LinkedIn sales manually. Well, just take a look at the numbers LinkedIn crunched. They compared users within the same organization, one group using Sales Navigator and the other group not using it.

Sales Navigator users outperform the other group in every category, by the following factors:

• Search Lift: 2.8x
• Decision Maker Profile Views: 4.6x
• Decision Maker Connections: 2.5x

LinkedIn found that Sales Navigator improved engagements across all industries. Now that we know it works, let’s learn how to use it best.

Get the Most from LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Ready to become your company’s resident Sales Navigator guru? Here are seven great insider tips to get your LinkedIn sales efforts going strong.

1. Filter All the Things

One of the most basic yet powerful tools within Sales Navigator is its ability to filter profiles and other search results. When you establish certain criteria for determining good potential sales leads, you can then filter large lists of contacts according to those criteria. This allows you to create lists of individuals and organizations you can follow.

Being able to easily read LinkedIn posts and updates from these leads will help you craft more personal, topical, and effective outreach messages.

Sales Navigator also lets you use a TeamLink Connections filter. This finds prospects who have first or second-degree mutual connections with you. This can be a terrific help, because leads with mutual friends or colleagues are up to five times more likely to schedule a follow-up meeting after initial contact. 

2. You’ve Got InMail, Use It

InMail is a communications feature in LinkedIn that allows you to send messages to users you aren’t connected to. It’s not accessible to basic LinkedIn account users, and higher-tier subscription levels come with limited monthly quotas of InMail.

If you have Sales Navigator, InMail is included. InMail can be a great way to make cold calls (if that’s something you do), or reach out to other potential leads you haven’t yet connected with on LinkedIn.

Also, don’t forget that the Sales Navigator app lets you send InMail from mobile devices.

3. Take Advantage of PointDrive

PointDrive is a Sales Navigator feature that offers merchants an enhanced way to push personalized content and deepen engagement with their buyers.

Sales communications with leads and existing customers often involves a good deal of back-and-forth. There’s a lot of answering questions, along with providing documents, images, video, and other content that informs buyers about the company and its products. How do your salespeople deliver that content to buyers? 

Email attachments tend to be the default, because everybody can open an email attachment — but universality often sacrifices aesthetics and functionality. Mobile devices can be especially unforgiving when it comes to displaying email attachments properly. It’s a fact that most of your leads will be reading your communications on their phone the vast majority of the time.

PointDrive gives you robust packaging and presentation options for your content. When a lead asks for information, you can deliver links, video, charts, and multimedia content that will answer all of their questions. This is done with a single-click link rather than a series of attachments. The media will also display the way you designed it to on the recipient’s device.

Best of all, PointDrive tracks individual engagements from within the lead’s organization. When they forward your content to their sales manager or CEO, you’ll know when they’ve seen it.

4. Leverage Sales Navigator Insights

There are many features in Sales Navigator that can be put to great use if you know where to find them.

Need some fresh leads? Sales Navigator can recommend leads to you based on your usage and profile information.

Got a promising but high-maintenance lead? Sales Navigator lets you assign notes and tags to their customer profile, and sync them with your CRM.

In an inbound marketing mood? Sales Navigator gives you expanded visibility into who has viewed your profile recently, so you can see who’s already interested in you and your company.

5. Send InMail to Open Profiles

So, you followed step two and now you’ve used up your InMail quota for the month? Don’t panic. You can still message unconnected users with open profiles without affecting your quota.

Don’t be shy—they kept their profiles open for a reason, right?

6. Provide Prospects with Value They’re “Interested In”

LinkedIn users who fill out the “Interests” section of their profile are doing you a huge favor. 

They’re giving you a whole list of topics you can use as: 

• A launching point for a cold call.
• Discussion fodder to get a better sense of their personality and priorities.
• A road map for where and how your company and its products can meet their needs.

Any “interest” that can be tied back to something your product helps with is a perfect launching point for a sales pitch that directly addresses the things that matter most to your lead. 

Learning about what your leads are interested in, and figuring out how your products can provide them with value by serving those interests better, will give you a tremendous advantage over competitors who don’t bother to tailor their approach to their leads.

7. Add the Sales Navigator Extension to Google Chrome

Chrome users can fit the Sales Navigator command console right into their desktop sales rig. 

Sales Navigator’s Chrome extension allows you to see LinkedIn profiles from within your Gmail or G Suite accounts. Hover your mouse over an email address link, and if there’s a LinkedIn profile associated with it, that profile will pop up for you to view.

The extension can also prompt you with “icebreaker” topics, save leads for you, and pull up TeamLink data.

Conclusion

With the right tools, LinkedIn can be a fantastic resource for finding leads, making initial contact with them, engaging in sales activities, and providing in-depth information about your products and services.

Sales Navigator provides you with a versatile and powerful toolkit that lets you traverse LinkedIn and identify your potential leads with ease.

Sales departments can’t afford to take half measures when it comes to establishing a strong presence on social media platforms. For many B2B companies, that goes double for LinkedIn. Built and supported by LinkedIn, Sales Navigator is a must-have add-on for getting the most out of LinkedIn.