Sales navigator is a powerful sales enablement tool from LinkedIn that can significantly improve the effectiveness of sales outreach efforts. With detailed contact information, relevant news alerts, and recommendation algorithms, sales navigator makes it easier for sales reps to identify, connect with, and build relationships with their target prospects.
What is Sales Navigator?
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s premium sales tool. It provides sales professionals with additional information and functionality to help them identify, connect with, and build relationships with prospects on LinkedIn.
Key features of Sales Navigator include:
- Advanced search and filtering capabilities to identify prospects that match ideal customer profiles
- Contact information for prospects, including direct dial phone numbers and email addresses
- News alerts and notifications when prospects make changes to their LinkedIn profiles
- TeamLink collaboration tools to share accounts and contacts with sales teams
- Sales analytics and reporting to track prospecting activities and results
- Lead recommendations based on account attributes and activity history
With over 690 million members, LinkedIn is a goldmine for B2B sales prospecting. Sales Navigator makes it easier for salespeople to leverage the LinkedIn database to identify, connect with, and build relationships with their ideal prospects.
How Can Sales Navigator Help With Outbound Prospecting?
Sales Navigator includes several features that can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of outbound prospecting efforts.
Identify Relevant Prospects
The advanced search and filtering capabilities in Sales Navigator make it easy to identify relevant prospects that match your ideal customer profile (ICP). You can search by criteria like company, title, industry, location, skills, and more. Prospect recommendations also suggest new contacts to target based on account attributes.
For example, you could use Sales Navigator to identify all VP and Director level prospects at Fortune 500 companies in the technology industry based in San Francisco. This allows you to build targeted prospect lists that fit your ICP.
Find Contact Information
One of the biggest challenges in outbound prospecting is finding up-to-date contact information like direct phone numbers and email addresses. Sales Navigator provides contact information for over 40 million prospects on LinkedIn.
This contact data integrated directly into LinkedIn profiles cuts down the time spent hunting down contact details, verifying data, and researching prospects.
Prioritize Outreach with Lead Recommendations
Sales Navigator uses prospect activity tracking and algorithms to provide personalized lead recommendations. This allows sales reps to prioritize following up with prospects that are more likely to convert based on attributes like:
- Viewing your LinkedIn profile
- Viewing or sharing your content
- Job changes
- New leads at accounts they watch
Focusing on the warmest leads first is a proven way to boost sales productivity and conversion rates.
Craft Relevant Personalized Messages
Sales Navigator provides background information and news alerts on prospects that can be used to personalize and tailor messaging. Knowing things like someone’s job change, new projects at their company, or interest in certain topics enables more relevant outreach.
Personalized messaging gets up to 40% higher response rates than generic outreach.
Track Open and Response Rates
You can track open and response rates for email outreach within Sales Navigator. This allows you to see your top performing messages and tactics and double down on what works.
Sales reps using Sales Navigator have open rates 2x higher compared to generic outreach.
How Can Sales Navigator Help You Expand Your Network?
In addition to outbound prospecting, Sales Navigator can support expanding your overall sales network and sphere of influence to drive referrals.
Get Introduced Through TeamLink
The TeamLink feature allows you to collaborate with colleagues by sharing accounts and contacts. Your teammates can then provide personal introductions to prospects in their own network that you would not have access to otherwise.
Send More LinkedIn Connection Requests
Sales Navigator allows you to send up to 300 LinkedIn connection requests per month versus just 100 with a free LinkedIn account. You can use the additional connection capacity to expand your overall network faster.
Identify Referral Opportunities
Sales Navigator makes it easy to identify connections you and a prospect share. You can leverage these shared connections to get referred to a prospect you want to connect with.
InMail messages through a mutual connection have a 60% higher response rate compared to cold outreach.
How Can You Use Sales Navigator for Account-Based Sales?
For account-based sales where you target specific companies rather than individual prospects, Sales Navigator has several advantages.
Create Target Account Lists
You can use the advanced search capabilities to identify target companies that match your ideal customer profile. Search filters like industry, company size, location, technologies used, and more make building targeted account lists fast and easy.
Identify Key Buying Influencers
Sales Navigator provides organizational charts for target accounts so you can map out the key buyers and influencers in the deal process. Identifying and targeting multiple stakeholders at an account is crucial for account-based sales.
Monitor Trigger Events at Target Accounts
News alerts in Sales Navigator notify you when contacts at your target accounts make changes to their LinkedIn profile like job changes, promotions, new skills, etc. This allows you to reach out to discuss relevant trigger events.
For example, if a VP of Engineering at one of your target accounts adds “Business Intelligence” as a new skill, you could reach out to discuss potential new opportunities to help with BI initiatives.
Coordinate Account-Based Campaigns
By sharing target account lists and contacts with sales teammates through TeamLink, you can coordinate sequenced multi-touch outreach campaigns across the buying committee.
This orchestrated approach is the key to success with account-based sales.
Tips for Using Sales Navigator for Outreach
Here are some best practices for using Sales Navigator to improve sales prospecting and outreach efforts:
- Define an ideal customer profile so you can easily identify relevant prospects and accounts to target
- Review prospect news alerts daily and respond quickly to trigger events like new jobs, content shares, etc.
- Prioritize following up on inbound leads from prospects that have already shown interest
- Leverage TeamLink to collaborate with colleagues and expand your network through introductions
- Use LinkedIn profile views and TeamLink activity reports to double down on outreach that leads to engagement
- Track open, response, and conversion rates to continually refine your outreach sequences
- Set aside dedicated time for sales prospecting activities
- Use LinkedIn groups and content shares to raise awareness and increase inbound leads
Sales Navigator Cost
Sales Navigator pricing starts at $79.99 per user per month for the Professional plan. Enterprise and Team plan options are also available with additional functionality and support.
Considering the amount of time Sales Navigator can save on prospecting research and outreach, the tool often provides a very high ROI. Sales reps using Sales Navigator report as much as a 27% increase in leads and a 41% increase in opportunities.
Sales Navigator Free Trial
Sales Navigator offers a free 7-day trial so you can experience the benefits firsthand. You can sign up for a trial account on the Sales Navigator website.
Conclusion
Sales Navigator provides a significant competitive advantage for sales teams looking to improve their prospecting process and increase qualified pipeline. The ability to identify and connect with relevant prospects, coordinate account-based campaigns, and track prospect engagement can take productivity to the next level.
If your team struggles with inefficient manual processes for outbound prospecting, Sales Navigator is worth exploring. The free trial provides the opportunity to experience the time savings and conversion boost for your sales outreach efforts.