Sales teams no longer have to spend time moving door to door or cold-calling prospects. With the advancement of technology, there are several online tools that make following the sales process and searching for prospects easier and more accessible. One of the most popular is LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. Following are the top features of the tool and tips on how to use it for your business.
What is Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator provides sales teams with the tools and features they need to find prospects, such as direct communication and real-time updates, as well as sharing content with customers.
- Real-time updates. This includes live notifications about job changes and insights on leads, allowing sales teams to send out relevant information about their company to prospects.
- Direct communications. After seeing who has viewed their profile, teams can use the InMail messaging tool to get in contact with viewers and engage them with PointDrive presentations.
Sales Navigator comes in several different subscription plans starting at $64.99 per month for an annual plan and $79.99 for a month-to-month plan. There are also custom pricing options for enterprise organizations.
[Read: Looking for Customers? Top Tools for Finding New Leads]
Features of Sales Navigator
There are many notable features of Sales Navigator, although not every feature is available at each subscription level.
Lead Builder
The advanced search option has over 20 criteria that help companies find prospects they can engage with. Some criteria include geography, title, years in current position, years of experience and industry. If you’re looking to reconnect with previous customers, you can use a filter to refine your search.
Lead list and recommendation
To gain more information about a prospect before reaching out, you can add them to a lead list. This list is kept private (only appearing in your sales leads page) and the prospect has no knowledge of being included. Your leads page shows updates from your prospects.
There is a leads recommendation feature that provides a list of potential customers for your sales team to shift through and gather information. These recommendations are based on and similar to those saved in your leads list.
There are many notable features of Sales Navigator, although not every feature is available at each subscription level.
TeamLink
One way to get in touch with prospects is to find a LinkedIn connection from both of your networks that can introduce you. Using TeamLink, sales teams can find the connections and reach out.
InMail messages
Once you find a connection with a prospect, you can use InMail messages to introduce yourself, get acquainted and send content their way using PointDrive presentations. It gives access to a direct connection between the buyer and seller.
CRM integration
Teams that already use a CRM program have nothing to fear. Sales Navigator automatically integrates with your CRM, keeping up-to-date information about available opportunities, who you're currently selling to and what leads you have. All lead list information and notes can be accessed through the CRM.
[Read: 6 Alternatives to Sales Navigator]
Tips for using Sales Navigator
In order to get the best use of the Sales Navigator, here are a few tips for success:
- Apply search criteria to your own network to find possible leads among your connections. In your leads list menu, select ‘My Network’ and it will search your connections using the same filters for outside leads.
- Save specific searches for future reference to avoid having to re-enter search criteria.
- Set up alerts to update you when people join the criteria for a specific search, when someone changes a job or when they join a different company.
- Create notes and save them to CRM. Notes about how you reached out, when you reached out and how a person received your information can help determine what the next steps will be, if any.
- Download the mobile app, which allows you to access all Sales Navigator features from any location.
Sales Navigator brings efficiency to the prospect search. This tool can help teams find and build connections at a faster pace and turn prospects into customers.
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