LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool that can transform how you find and manage leads on LinkedIn. As a beginner, it might seem a bit overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you lived without it. Let’s walk through the basics of using Sales Navigator (often called Sales Nav) to fill your pipeline with great prospects:
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What is Sales Navigator? It’s LinkedIn’s premium offering for sales professionals. Think of LinkedIn as a massive database of professionals and companies – Sales Nav is an advanced search and tracking tool that helps you filter that database to exactly your target audience and keep tabs on them. With Sales Navigator, you get advanced search filters, ability to save leads and accounts, see more info on profiles (even outside your network), send InMails, and get alerts on lead activities. If you don’t already have access, check with our team – The Mellow likely provides a license or can get you set up, since it’s incredibly useful for B2B prospecting.
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Setting Up Your Sales Nav Account: Once you have access, fill out your Sales Preferences (you’ll find this in settings). Here you can specify the geographies, industries, company sizes, and job functions you typically target. For example, you might set geography to “San Francisco Bay Area,” industry to “Tech, Hospitality, Real Estate” (or others relevant), company headcount to “11-200” and “201-1000” (mid-size companies often a sweet spot), and function to “Administrative, Operations, Human Resources” (to catch office managers, facilities folks, etc.). These preferences aren’t strict filters, but they help LinkedIn’s algorithm suggest leads that fit our profile.
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Using Advanced Search Filters: This is the heart of Sales Navigator. Click on the search bar and choose to search for Leads (people) or Accounts (companies). For leads, Sales Nav provides over 20 filters. Some of the most useful filters for us might be:
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Geography: e.g., San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose (wherever we can service). Narrow to Bay Area so we stay local as per our value prop.
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Industry: Select industries that commonly invest in nice offices: Tech, Financial Services, Advertising, Law Firms, Hospitality, etc.
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Company headcount: Maybe 10-50, 51-200, 201-500… adjust based on where you’ve seen success. Larger companies have more bureaucracy, smaller ones might have less budget – mid-size often is a good focus for starting out.
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Title or Role Keywords: e.g., “Office Manager,” “Facilities,” “Workplace Services,” “HR Manager,” “Director of Administration,” “Operations Manager.” You can add multiple titles with the OR boolean (Sales Nav supports Boolean logic – e.g., title:”Office Manager” OR title:”Facilities Manager”). If you use the “Function” filter like “Administrative,” that can catch a broad range, but sometimes title keyword is more precise.
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Seniority Level: If you want only decision-makers, you might filter to “Director, CXO, Owner, VP” etc. However, in our case, a mid-level Office Manager often has the purchasing authority for something like plant services, so seniority filter isn’t always needed. Use your judgment.
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Company Type: Public, private, nonprofit – not usually crucial for us, but if you have a focus (maybe startups vs. established), you could use it.
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Keywords: You can even use keyword search for something like “office plants” or “biophilic” to find people who mention those terms on their profile, but that’s a bit niche.
As you apply filters, you’ll see the result count. Try to get a list that’s manageable (a few hundred to a couple thousand leads). For instance, you might get “300 results” of Office/Facilities Managers in Bay Area companies 50-500 employees in tech/hospitality. That’s a goldmine to start working through.
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Save Leads and Accounts: When you find a good lead, click “Save Lead.” This adds them to your list of saved leads, which is like your personal lead database within Sales Nav. You can organize leads by accounts (if you save the company as an Account) or even tag them. For a beginner, at least save key leads so you can easily find them later and get updates. Similarly, if you identify a target company (Account) that you want to pursue multiple people in, save that Account. For example, if you want to break into “XYZ Tech Corp,” save the company and maybe save 2-3 leads there (like the Office Manager, the HR director, etc.).
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Use Lead Recommendations: Sales Nav will start suggesting “People similar to X” or “People at Y company” based on who you save. This can surface new prospects you might have missed. It’s worth checking the “Recommended Leads” section which often appears on the home dashboard of Sales Nav.
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Set Up Alerts & Notifications: One of the coolest features is getting alerted on lead activities. For each saved lead, Sales Nav can notify you if they have a job change, if they post on LinkedIn, if their company is mentioned in the news, etc. These alerts are perfect excuses to reach out. For example, “Lead X started a new position” – maybe a congrats message that segues into your pitch since new roles often want to make changes. Or “Lead Y posted on LinkedIn” – you can like or comment on it to get on their radar. Check your Sales Nav homepage daily for these nuggets of intel.
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InMail and Messaging: Sales Nav grants a certain number of InMail credits (messages you can send to people you’re not connected to). Use these wisely for leads where you don’t have another way to contact them. You might craft a version of your outreach message (like we discussed in the LinkedIn outreach section) and send via InMail. InMail has the advantage of landing in their LinkedIn inbox with a special icon (which can draw attention) and sometimes even goes to their email if they have those notifications on. Always personalize InMails and don’t waste credits on super generic messages.
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Notes and Tags: When viewing a lead in Sales Nav, you can add notes. For instance, after you reach out or if you discover something (like “Called on 4/10, left VM”), you can note that so you remember. These notes are private to you. You can also tag leads (like “High Priority” or group by industry). In a small team, you might not need extensive tagging, but as you scale your prospects, organizing never hurts.
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Leverage TeamLink (if available): If The Mellow has multiple Sales Nav Team licenses, you might see something called TeamLink, which shows if anyone at our company is connected to a lead. This can be useful to find internal referral opportunities (e.g., our CEO is connected to that person, maybe they met at an event – you could ask the CEO for an intro). If TeamLink is enabled, take advantage of those insights.
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Stay Organized: Sales Nav is a tool to organize your prospecting. Perhaps set a routine like: each Monday, spend an hour on Sales Nav building a new lead list (applying filters and saving leads) for a certain segment (e.g., “Downtown SF law firms”). Then throughout the week, work through contacting those leads. Sales Nav will track if you viewed a profile, sent an InMail, etc., so you can see at a glance whom you’ve approached. Use it in tandem with our CRM – e.g., once you identify a hot lead on Sales Nav and make contact, put them into Perfex CRM as well for proper pipeline tracking. Sales Nav is great for discovery and initial reach-outs; CRM is great for ongoing management once they’re in our orbit.
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Take Advantage of Learning Resources: LinkedIn often updates Sales Nav with new features. They have their own help center and even free webinars about using Sales Navigator. If you’re keen, check out LinkedIn’s official guide or tutorials. Even on YouTube you’ll find walkthroughs. But don’t worry – you don’t need to master every feature from day one. Focus on filters, saving leads, and using alerts, which are the core benefits.
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Respect Limits and Data: Remember that Sales Nav is for finding and connecting, but keep notes of outreach in the CRM to avoid multiple people from our team unknowingly contacting the same lead. Also, use the data ethically – it’s okay to mention public info (like their posts or news), but don’t say anything creepy like “I saw you changed your LinkedIn profile picture.” Common sense goes a long way.
By regularly using Sales Navigator, you’ll maintain a healthy flow of new prospects to contact. Instead of randomly searching LinkedIn, Sales Nav gives structure: you can systematically identify all the Office Managers at mid-size companies in SF, for instance, and be confident you’re not missing potential leads. It’s like having a cheat code to LinkedIn’s vast network.
As a beginner, start with small targeted searches and gradually build up. In no time, you’ll feel like a Sales Nav pro, harnessing LinkedIn’s data to feed your sales funnel with qualified leads – and ultimately, more deals for The Mellow.