How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Build Better Lead Lists

You already know that good lead lists are the key to successful sales.

In the B2B world, finding, learning about, and contacting the best possible leads is crucial to success. Running B2B outbound sales can be tough — your audience is likely used to receiving unwelcome cold emails and being inundated with pitches.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps reps prospect key leads and accounts through the ability to monitor their activities and look for similar contacts to reach out to.

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But with the right tools, you can rise to the top, get in front of your target audience and deliver a personal, personalized message.

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can find solid leads that will engage with you. Here’s how to get better leads with Sales Nav.

How To Get Better Leads With Sales Navigator

Plenty of sales teams use Sales Nav without getting the most out of the platform.

It’s not just about lead generation with Sales Navigator; it’s about using it to its full potential by creating quality, personalised and targeted lists.

Here are some steps you can take to do that.

Use the advanced filters

The Advanced Search on Sales Nav lets you find a very specific type of person or company, which means you can begin your sales campaign with more promise.

You can filter your searches by:

• Keywords
• Function and title
• Location
• Industry
• Company size
• Job changes in the past 90 days
• Anyone referenced in the news in the past 30 days
• LinkedIn posts 30 days or younger
• Shared experiences
• Followers of your company on LinkedIn
• Changes in senior leadership

The most useful aspects of Advanced Search are:

• Filtering by location and job title: whether you offer a service, product, or if you’re looking to make your next hire, it’s best to start in your local area. You can easily search by location and see only profiles of people based on proximity.
• Looking at company size: filtering by company size is important but often overlooked. Your product or service might be best used by small businesses, and you can easily target those companies with Advanced Search.
• Using keywords: on top of the other filter options, you can simply enter a keyword and the search engine will show you profiles that include that keyword. Then you can view those profiles to see if they’re worth adding to your lead list.
• Building rapport: Advanced Search can allow you to have the best first impression possible. You can find people who have mutual connections, shared experience, the same alma mater, and even the same previous employer. Having this built-in rapport can drastically help your cold outreach attempts.

Bond over shared interests

Speaking of rapport, I want to highlight how Sales Navigator can make a cold email warm from the beginning.

Because you’re able to be so specific with your search results and then save profiles to an organised list, you can ensure you have something in common with the person. This is the most effective way to make a good first impression.

How do you start off on the right foot?

What you can do is write a cold email template. Then you can contact the people on your leads list, personalising each email. Because you have a shared interest or experience, you can mention that in the email, instantly giving you a dash of rapport.

As an example, here’s what your email template could look like:

• A friendly greeting using the person’s name
• A sentence mentioning your shared interest/experience/education
• A sentence citing something the person has accomplished in their career along with an honest compliment
• 2-3 sentences explaining who you are and why you’re emailing, making sure to mention their company name
• Make your pitch, which is typically where you’d ask for their professional insight or see if they’re interested in learning more about a relevant topic
• Professional thank-you and goodbye along with a signature that includes your phone number

Get notified of trigger events

Another unique feature of Sales Navigator is that you can track your score and get alerts on your leads.

If someone looks at your content or profile, you’ll get a real-time alert. This means you can contact your leads at just the right time, ensuring you optimise for the best outcome. It also lets you know what content your target audience likes, so then you can make more of it.

Even better, you’ll be able to see if anyone on your leads list changes job titles or companies (or if any new leads are added to your search criteria on a weekly basis). Use this to reach out to new leads every week.

Use it for account-based outreach

Whether your target audience is the consumer or other businesses, you can use Sales Navigator for account-based selling. It allows you to reach a niche of people on a larger scale.

Aja Frost | HubSpot

You can learn what information on another profile matches your profile or page, meaning you can categorise profiles and pages based on that data, providing unique content to different accounts.

Because of the data and alerts you get with Sales Navigator, you’re able to get to know each account and whether they should be on your leads list or not.

For example, there’s another feature called The Buyer Circle. It shows you “all key stakeholders involved in the decision-making process for a particular deal,” according to LinkedIn.

So you can customize your content to fit the accounts you’re targeting. Then you can show that content to only those people, making your marketing efforts more effective.

Now you can see why Sales Navigator is possibly the best tool for building better lead lists. Using the steps above, you’ll be on your way to reaching your niche audience and growing your business.

Author: Brooklin Nash

Brooklin Nash is a content marketer with 7 years of B2B SaaS experience. He joined Wiza.co as Head of Content to create engaging content around cold email, lead generation and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Email Brooklin at brooklin@wiza.co