With over 740 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for sales and business development professionals. One of LinkedIn’s premium offerings is Sales Navigator, a sales intelligence tool designed to help identify, connect with, and nurture leads. But is the hefty price tag worth it? Let’s explore the pros and cons of LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find out if it’s worth the investment.
What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid subscription tool that gives salespeople extra insights and capabilities for targeting prospects on LinkedIn. It allows you to:
- Search for prospects by company, job title, industry, location, and more
- Save leads into customizable lists to nurture over time
- See how you’re connected to prospects through coworkers and groups
- View profiles anonymously without notifying prospects
- Get alerts when prospects make job changes or mention relevant keywords
- Send InMail messages directly to prospects who aren’t connections
- Track engagement on InMails, including open and response rates
Sales Navigator comes in four paid tiers: Professional, Team, Business, and Enterprise. The Professional plan is geared for individual sales reps, while the Team, Business, and Enterprise plans add features like lead recommendations, team collaboration tools, and AI-driven insights.
The Pros of Sales Navigator
Here are some of the key benefits that Sales Navigator provides:
More Search Filters
The Sales Navigator advanced search allows you to filter prospects on over a dozen attributes to drill down to your ideal targets. You can search by seniority, company size, job function, geography, education, skills, and more. This makes it easy to identify relevant prospects and eliminate ones that don’t meet your criteria.
Lead Recommendations
The Sales Navigator AI will automatically recommend new leads for you to contact based on your saved searches, ideal customer profile, and past prospecting activity. This takes a lot of the manual work out of finding potential leads.
Team Collaboration
With the Team, Business, and Enterprise plans, you can share lead lists and saved searches with coworkers. You can also see which prospects your colleagues have already contacted to avoid overlap. And you can provide status updates on leads to keep your whole team in sync.
InMail Integration
Sales Navigator makes it easy to engage prospects by letting you send InMail messages directly from a prospect’s profile. You can also see InMail open and response rates to know if your messages are effective. Plus, the tool will alert you when a key prospect responds to your InMail.
List Building and Lead Management
You can use Sales Navigator to build curated lead lists based on your ideal customer profile. Save relevant prospects to target now or nurture for the future. The tool also updates you on job changes, promotions, and other profile updates so you can reach out at just the right time.
Prospecting Insights
Sales Navigator provides helpful insights on prospects right in their profile, like shared connections, groups, interests, and recent activity. You can quickly see discussion topics to break the ice and connectors who can make a warm introduction.
The Cons of Sales Navigator
While Sales Navigator has some great features, there are also some downsides to consider:
Steep Price
The Sales Navigator Professional plan costs $64.99 per user per month when billed annually. That’s a hefty monthly fee for solopreneurs and small businesses on a budget. The Team plan bumps pricing up to $779.99 per month for 5 users. And customized Enterprise pricing starts at $3,000 per month.
Not for Consumer Sales
Since Sales Navigator focuses on targeting business prospects, it’s not ideal for consumer-focused sales. The advanced filters gear more towards B2B attributes like company, title, industry, and employee count.
Data Accuracy Issues
While LinkedIn has a large membership, some user profiles may have inaccurate employment data. And there’s no guarantee that saved prospects will regularly update their profiles. So some leads may have moved to new companies or roles without you knowing.
Irrelevant Lead Recommendations
While the AI does automatically recommend new leads, some suggestions may be off base or irrelevant to your business. You’ll still need to manually review the suggested prospects to weed out any that don’t fit your customer profile.
Too Many Alerts
You can get bombarded with notifications on profile views, searched term mentions, and other account activities. While it’s helpful intelligence, the barrage of alerts can be overwhelming.
Who Gets the Most Value From Sales Navigator?
Sales Navigator tends to provide the greatest ROI for these types of users:
- Enterprise sales teams – Syncing up multi-rep teams to coordinate outreach improves productivity.
- recruiters – The advanced search filters help quickly source qualified candidates.
- LinkedIn power users – Heavy LinkedIn users will get more value from the premium tools.
- Outbound sales reps – Proactively engaging cold prospects is what Sales Navigator is designed for.
- Sales development reps (SDRs) – Lead research and list building aids SDR prospecting.
More occasional or passive LinkedIn users may not use Sales Navigator enough to justify the high subscription cost. And consumer-focused sales people will find fewer relevant prospects and insights.
Sales Navigator Tips and Tricks
Here are some tips for getting the most out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator:
Customize Your Newsfeed
Tailor your newsfeed to showcase content from your target prospects and accounts. This allows you to gain helpful business intel and join relevant conversations.
Refine Your Saved Searches
The more you refine your saved searches using precise parameters, the better your lead recommendations will become over time.
Personalize InMail templates
Make your InMail messages more effective by personalizing each one with specific prospect details and insights.
Use the Mobile App
The Sales Navigator mobile app makes it easy to manage prospects on the go from anywhere.
Follow Companies
Follow key companies to receive notifications when your prospects make job changes or company updates.
Use TeamLinks
TeamLinks allow you to see all colleagues who are connected to a prospect for warm introductions.
Tag Leads
Use lead tags to segment and prioritize prospects for more targeted outreach campaigns.
Alternatives to Sales Navigator
If you find Sales Navigator too pricey, here are a few alternative sales intelligence tools to consider:
LinkedIn Recruiter
Recruiter offers advanced searching and messaging for sourcing job candidates. Pricing starts at $499/month.
Apollo.io
Apollo helps you find email addresses and phone numbers for prospects. Plans start at $49/month.
DiscoverOrg
DiscoverOrg provides in-depth company and contact data for lead research. Pricing is customized.
Clearbit (Reveal)
Reveal by Clearbit shows detailed firmographic and tech data on companies. Plans start at $399/month.
Seamless.ai
Seamless offers AI-powered lead enrichment, email finder, and sales intelligence. Pricing starts at $99/month.
LeadIQ
LeadIQ integrates with Gmail to surface LinkedIn profiles for email contacts. Plans start at $599/month.
The Verdict: Sales Navigator is Best for Power Users
Sales Navigator provides robust tools for identifying and engaging with prospects on LinkedIn. For high-volume users who regularly interact with prospects on LinkedIn, the premium features can certainly justify the price.
But more passive LinkedIn users may find the high subscription cost outweighs the benefits. And some alternatives like Apollo.io offer more budget-friendly options for basic sales intelligence.
In the end, Sales Navigator delivers tremendous value, but is likely overkill for many solopreneurs, small business owners, and consumer-focused sales people. The ideal Sales Navigator user is an enterprise B2B sales rep or SDR who prospect on LinkedIn daily.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Sales Navigator increase sales?
Sales Navigator can help boost sales by enabling users to identify, connect with, and nurture more relevant prospects faster. But simply using the tool alone doesn’t directly guarantee increased sales. Maximizing ROI requires using Sales Navigator strategically for outbound prospecting campaigns.
Is Sales Navigator free with LinkedIn Premium?
No, Sales Navigator is a completely separate paid subscription from LinkedIn Premium. A Premium account does not include access to any Sales Navigator features.
Can you use Sales Navigator anonymously?
Yes, one of the benefits of Sales Navigator is the ability to anonymously view LinkedIn profiles without prospects knowing you visited their pages. You can remain anonymous while researching prospects before reaching out.
What’s the difference between Sales Navigator and Recruiter?
LinkedIn Recruiter focuses specifically on sourcing job candidates for hiring. Sales Navigator is for finding prospects to sell to. Recruiter costs a bit less but has fewer features than Sales Navigator.
Is Sales Navigator worth the cost?
For serious B2B prospectors and outbound sales reps who live in LinkedIn for lead generation, Sales Navigator is likely worth the investment. But for more casual users, the premium price may outweigh the benefits.