LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an incredibly powerful tool for finding new prospects and opportunities. With its robust search functionality, you can drill down into LinkedIn’s massive database of over 750 million members to uncover accounts, leads, and contacts that match your ideal customer profile.
However, Sales Navigator’s advanced search features go far beyond basic keyword searches. To get the most out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you need to understand how to craft targeted searches using filters and Boolean operators. This ensures you surface only the most relevant prospects for your outreach.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through every facet of searching within LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You’ll learn how to:
- Search for individual people using keywords, titles, locations, and other filters
- Find target accounts and tap into their employee bases
- Identify leads based on industry, job function, skills, and interests
- Craft Boolean search strings to combine various search parameters
- Save searches to curate targeted lead lists and track new prospects
Whether you’re new to Sales Navigator or looking to improve your search skills, this guide will teach you how to master search to fuel your sales prospecting. Let’s get started!
Searching for People
The foundation of any good Sales Navigator search is looking for relevant people that match your ideal customer profile. Let’s go through the various ways you can search for prospects on an individual level.
Basic Keyword Search
The most straightforward way to search LinkedIn members is by keyword. You can enter any keyword or series of keywords into the main search bar at the top of Sales Navigator. This searches first names, last names, titles, companies, schools, skills, and other profile fields for those keywords.
For example, if you sell HR software, you may want to search for terms like “HR Manager”, “VP of HR”, “Head of Human Resources”, “CHRO”, etc. This helps surface HR decision makers and influencers that could be potential buyers for your product.
Title Search
Searching by keyword alone can sometimes turn up results that are too broad. One way to narrow your search is to filter specifically by job title using advanced search filters.
On the Sales Navigator home page, click on the “Advanced” link next to the main search bar. This will open up advanced filters. Under the Criteria dropdown, select Title. You can then enter any job title you want to target.
For example, an account executive at a PR agency may want to search specifically for “Marketing Manager” or “Director of Communications” titles. This returns prospects with those exact titles, rather than just anyone with those keywords appearing somewhere in their profile.
Company Search
Another helpful search filter is Company. This lets you specify the name of a company to surface employees who work there.
For example, if you wanted to target leads at Microsoft, enter “Microsoft” under Company in the advanced search filters. This will return profiles of Microsoft employees.
You can even combine Company and Title filters to pinpoint people with a specific title within a target company. For example, “Director of Sales at Microsoft” or “Head of Marketing at Adobe”.
Location Search
Location is another valuable advanced filter for geo-targeting your prospect search. You can filter by country, state, city, or postal code.
Some ways location search could be used:
- An event company based in Miami wants to find local prospects. They search “City: Miami” to surface Miami-based leads.
- An Australian B2B company wants to expand into the U.S. They search “Country: United States” to find prospects there.
- A software company with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago wants to find leads in those metro areas. They search those cities’ names to turn up local prospects.
Geo-targeted searching is extremely helpful for businesses focused on specific local markets or wanting to tap into new geographic regions.
Current Company Search
Searching by Current Company under advanced filters lets you identify people who are currently employed at specific companies that you want to target.
This works similarly to Company search, but filters specifically for a person’s current place of employment as stated in their LinkedIn profile. This is useful for eliminating people who have since left the companies you are targeting.
For example, an enterprise sales rep could search for “Current Company: Amazon” to find people currently working at Amazon to sell to.
Past Company Search
You can also search by someone’s Past Company. This surfaces profiles of people who have previously worked at a given company, even if they work somewhere else now.
Searching past companies is a common tactic to find prospects at target accounts. For example, an SDR could search:
“Past Company: Microsoft” to find people who used to work at Microsoft that now work at other companies. This turns up leads who are familiar with Microsoft and may still have connections there.
You can combine Past Company with Current Company to say: Find people who used to work at Microsoft but now work at other tech companies. This helps you identify prospects with experience at the company you want to sell to.
School Search
Another advanced filter is School. Searching by university or college is useful for targeting alumni for fundraising and alumni relations programs. But it also has applications for corporate sales.
For example, you may want to search for prospects who attended top-tier MBA programs like Harvard Business School or Wharton. This helps surface business decision makers with influential pedigrees.
Here are some examples of how school search could be used:
- An edtech company searches “School: Stanford” to target Stanford grads.
- A fundraising officer searches “School: University of Michigan” to reach Michigan alumni.
- An enterprise tech company searches “School: Harvard Business School” to find HBS alums.
So don’t forget about school as a search filter when you want to tap into specific alumni networks.
Group Search
Searching by Group allows you to surface individuals who are members of specific LinkedIn Groups related to your target market.
For example, an IT services firm may want to target prospects within LinkedIn Groups like “IT Directors Network”, “CIO Network”, or “IT Professionals”.
Group search works well for tapping into niche communities organized around specific interests, industries, and professional focuses. Identify relevant Groups and search for members who are actively participating.
Interests Search
You can also leverage the Interests advanced filter to uncover prospects based on the interests listed on their profile.
Maybe you want to target people interested in relevant technologies, professional skills, industries, or business topics. If your product or service aligns with certain interests, this filter can help surface good fits.
For example, a construction management software company could search:
“Interests: Construction”
“Interests: Building Information Modeling”
“Interests: Construction Engineering”
This returns prospects passionate about construction—a good sign they’d be interested in construction management software.
Function Search
Those are the main ways to search individual people on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. But there is one more advanced filter worth mentioning:
Function lets you search by a person’s department or function within their company. Common examples are Marketing, IT, Operations, Engineering, Finance, etc.
Function search works well for targeting leads by their departmental roles. For example, you may want to target Heads of Marketing or VPs of Sales specifically.
So in summary, keyword searches are a starting point—but taking advantage of advanced filters for title, company, location, school, interests, and function lets you craft extremely targeted prospect searches.
Searching for Companies
In addition to searching for individuals, you can leverage Sales Navigator to uncover target company accounts.
The same keyword search bar at the top of the platform can be used to search company names directly. For example:
“Microsoft”
“Adobe Systems”
“HubSpot”
This pulls up the company’s LinkedIn Page along with employee names and contact info to target.
But beyond searching company names, you can also filter accounts by:
- Company Size
- Industry
- Location
For example, you may want to target:
- Mid-market companies between 100-1000 employees
- Software companies within the San Francisco Bay Area
- Retail brands with over $1B in revenue
Company search filters allow you to home in on accounts that align with your ideal customer profile based on their size, industry, location, or other attributes.
Once you find a company, you can click through to view their company page. Here you’ll see employee names and titles to begin prospecting into the account.
So company search lays the foundation for your account-based approach. Find targeted companies then expand into their employee base for individual prospecting.
Lead Center Searches
Now that we’ve covered searching for people and companies, let’s talk about Lead Center in Sales Navigator.
The Lead Center is a dedicated hub to search for sales leads tailored to your business. It combines advanced filters and recommendations to surface contacts likely to be qualified prospects.
Here are some of the ways you can search for leads in the Lead Center:
Industry Search
One of the top filters to leverage is Industry. You can enter the specific industry verticals you sell into like:
- Software
- Financial Services
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
Lead Center will return prospects that work within those industries that may need solutions like yours.
Function Search
Similarly, the Function filter lets you define the roles or departments you want to target:
- Marketing
- IT
- Sales
- Engineering
This helps surface leads by their functional area of focus.
Seniority Search
You can filter leads by Seniority to target decision-making levels:
- C-Suite
- Director
- Manager
- Senior
For example, targeting C-level and VP contacts helps you reach executive stakeholders with purchasing authority.
Keyword Search
Don’t forget keyword search in the Lead Center as well. You may want to search keywords for:
- Job titles
- Skills
- Technologies used
- Brands/products used
Keywords relevant to your offerings help surface prospects that align with your ICP.
List Search
Finally, once you save lead lists within Sales Navigator, you can re-open and search those lists to filter just that group of prospects.
For example, you may have created lists for:
- Past webinar attendees
- Net new outbound prospects
- Inactive nurture leads
Saving and searching these lists lets you engage the right groups.
So in summary, leverage Lead Center filters for industry, function, seniority, keywords, and lists for targeted lead generation.
Crafting Boolean Searches
We’ve covered individual filters—now let’s discuss how to combine filters using Boolean search logic for even more advanced searching.
Boolean searches allow you to construct complex queries using AND/OR operators to link multiple parameters.
Here are some examples of Boolean searches you could create in Sales Navigator:
- Title: (Sales Manager OR Head of Sales) AND Company: (Microsoft OR Adobe OR HubSpot)
- Current Company: Amazon AND Past Company: (Google OR Facebook OR Microsoft)
- School: Stanford AND Interests: (Venture Capital OR Entrepreneurship)
These examples demonstrate how you can chain together different filters using AND to narrow down the search, and OR to expand possible values for a filter.
The key is to think through the ideal combination of parameters that defines your perfect prospect—then translate that into Boolean syntax.
This allows you to filter by keywords, titles, companies, locations, interests, and more in a single search. The result is a very targeted prospect list.
Saving Your Searches
One key best practice for search is saving the searches you create. This allows you to:
- Name and organize searches for easy reference
- Schedule searches to run automatically in the background
- Track new prospects that appear over time who match the search criteria
For example, you may want to save searches for:
- HR Directors at mid-market SaaS companies
- C-level executives in the financial services industry
- Alumni of INSEAD based in Europe
Saving these searches lets you continually monitor for new prospects matching these parameters.
To save a search in Sales Navigator:
- Construct a search query using keywords and filters
- Click “Save” next to the search bar
- Name the search
- Select the frequency for email search alerts
- Click “Save” to finish saving the search
Now this search will be saved under Lead Gen in the left nav. You can refer back to curate new prospects over time that match this search profile.
So remember to save key searches you create and set alerts. This transforms Sales Navigator into an automated lead generation engine!
Best Practices for Search
Let’s wrap up with some best practices to keep in mind:
- Leverage Boolean operators to link multiple filters in one search.
- Save common searches for easy repeatability and tracking new prospects over time.
- Filter broadly at first then narrow down based on results volume and quality.
- Test different keyword variations to see what yields the strongest results.
- Sort results by relevance, relationship, date added, and other filters.
- Analyze your search results data to optimize future search efforts.
Following these tips will make you a power Sales Navigator searcher!
Next Steps
Hopefully this guide provided a comprehensive overview of how to master search in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Here are some next steps to put your skills into action:
- Brainstorm specific titles, companies, interests, and keywords to search for your ideal prospects.
- Start constructing targeted Boolean searches combining relevant filters.
- Build initial prospect lists from your searches to fuel outreach.
- Save the best searches and set alerts to automatically surface new leads over time.
- Continue refining and experimenting with search as you analyze results.
Following these steps will help you tap into the full potential of Sales Navigator search.
The ability to identify your ideal prospects amidst hundreds of millions of profiles is incredibly powerful. Apply what you learned today to uncover your next big sales opportunities hiding within LinkedIn’s vast member network.
Happy searching!
Conclusion
In closing, mastering LinkedIn Sales Navigator search is crucial to extract maximum value from the platform. Take the time to learn its robust functionality and advanced filters to surface targeted, relevant prospects.
Boolean search logic unlocks the ability to combine filters and keywords for precise results. Saving searches creates an automated lead generation engine.
Follow this guide’s steps and best practices to become an expert conducting searches. This will enable you to cut through LinkedIn’s data noise and pinpoint the contacts that matter most for your sales prospects.
Thanks for reading! Please share any additional Sales Navigator search tips in the comments.