3 Must-Use Sales Navigator Features

Everyone reading this should hopefully know what Sales Navigator is.

Despite it being packed with features, many pay for the subscription but don't really know what to do with it.

I've worked with large sales teams with hundreds of licenses and many don't use it. The big reason for this is simple.

Features don't mean anything unless you can apply them to achieve your goals.

Many of the tutorials out there can help you understand the features, but it takes real experience of using Sales Navigator in selling situations to really feel its benefit.

So, I'm listing some key ways anyone selling on the platform can use Sales Navigator features in their day-to-day.

Account & Lead Lists

We know that to engage a prospect, you will have to make multiple touchpoints. My preference is to make as many of those touchpoints relational rather than pitchy. This means I engage with a prospect multiple times before ever sending an outreach message.

I use my lead lists as a 'Battlefield CRM' - it can take a lot of work in any CRM to access a contact's details, review past activity and then decide to engage my prospects. My lead lists are organised and I can see all the current prospects on one screen, add notes and take action from one place.

This speeds up my work developing relationships.

Company Page View - Spotlights

The new company page view is packed full of insights. This gives me knowledge about what is happening within the target account and helps me shape how I can approach this company.

In the spotlights section, I can quickly see the state of my connectivity with the target organisation. I can also see the movements in people and can find the key players we need to develop relationships with.

I can see who I'm connected to, who has viewed my profile and the movements within the business (promotions etc).

I'm not focused on just one decision maker. All the data says, that buying committees are bigger and developing one relationship within a business is a big mistake.

I've met a number of people who believe that the key to winning sales is getting in front of exactly the right decision maker. I'd argue, it's smarter to develop with the influencers first.

So many deals come apart when the influencers poo-poo it. If you're trying to open £100k+ deals, you've got to get influencers relationally engaged first, so they are at least open to you.

Account Search - Buyer Intent

This is a relatively new feature, but you can now search accounts by buyer intent. Whilst people have mixed feelings about the buyer intent feature, I personally love it.

In my experience (I live and breathe sales on LinkedIn) it isn't a slam dunk-when-shall-I-send-the-invoice buyer intent - but, it is an indicator that these are good companies to develop or engage with as there is interest.

As an example, this week, someone we sent a proposal to before Christmas has risen to the top this week and it so happens they have arranged a follow up call this week with one of my team.

It's an indicator.

Now, this feature is in the search it can help you focus activity on more of the engaged people - which will yield results more quickly.

I use the buying intent as a score - as someone rises, it gives me a prompt that the timing is right. The search allows you to reverse the process - who has high buying intent - let's focus on them - at least for the next 2-3 months.

This gives you the ability to have a more short term and long term strategy with LinkedIn - you can engage with the higher buying intent as current quarter prospects whilst relationally developing Q2 prospects.