How To Use Linkedin Sales Navigator To Generate Leads – Features You Aren’t Using [But Need To Be]

Here’s an interesting fact: LinkedIn has 875 million users from over 200 countries.

In an ideal world, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator would easily help you find guaranteed leads to buy your products and services. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. 

To be blunt: you might feel that most of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator features are unnecessary. Or don’t work. 

You might ask, “Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator even worth it?” That’s understandable. But we’re here to tell you there is a way to win with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In this guide, you’ll learn to leverage the Sales Navigator LinkedIn offers to drive B2B leads that could pay you more than $50,000 USD per month. This is the exact method we have used at Scaling With Systems to drive clients who stay with us for years!

You’re going to learn how to screen the LinkedIn database (using Sales Navigator boolean search) so that you can connect with the right C-suite executives or decision-makers.

This will give you the confidence to use features of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator that most people don’t even know about and realize that the LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost is well worth it.

Why Should You Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

There are two BIG reasons to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator if you want to scale your business operations:

1. LinkedIn’s regular search feature version has search number limitations

2. With the regular version, you don’t get advanced search features that are super valuable (we’ll explain what we mean in a moment). 

Did you know that regular LinkedIn allows you only a certain number of searches per month? Once you cross the quota, LinkedIn will restrict your search until it gets renewed again (it’ll show when).

It’s a LinkedIn way of preventing the free harvesting of B2B leads. Of course, LinkedIn wants you to purchase LinkedIn Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Premium – we can’t blame them for creating premium services. 

Another big reason to use the LinkedIn Navigator is that it allows you to do advanced searches with the boolean search. It’s a feature that’ll turn the table once you master it (hey, it’s easier than mathematics).

Without going deep into Algebra, let us explain what “boolean” means. In computer science and algebraic logic systems, a boolean is a data type with two possible values.

Don’t worry if you don’t get it now. We’ll show you how to use this in your LinkedIn prospecting campaigns.

Basically, because people don’t know how to intelligently use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, they end up complaining that it’s not worth it. But once you learn the right Linkedin techniques, you’ll leverage this lead acquisition tactic that your rivals won’t even know about.

How To Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator (Get Started!)

To learn how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, there are three important things you should be clear about:

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Premium: The Difference

There’s one fine difference you need to understand; LinkedIn Sales Navigator is specifically for sales professionals and is used for lead generation. On the other hand, LinkedIn Premium is suitable for all kinds of professionals who want to elevate their LinkedIn experience.

For your reference, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost is:

  • For Professionals: $99/month
  • For Teams: $149/month
  • For Enterprises: Starting at $1600/year. It also depends on the company size.

2. The Persona of your Audience

You should have a clear persona of your audience to use the Sales Navigator to its full potential. As a sales professional, you already know how important personas are for lead prospecting. 

3. Using The Search Function In LinkedIn’s Regular Version & LinkedIn Premium

Do you know you can use boolean searches even on the LinkedIn regular version? You should use this feature and hone your skills before you invest in the Sales Navigator.

Next: Using LinkedIn Navigator

To use the Sales Navigator, purchase the subscription from LinkedIn. After buying the Sales Navigator, LinkedIn will ask you some questions to understand your preferences, like:

  • Pick 5 of your favorite companies
  • Whom are you trying to outreach?

After you complete the formalities, head to your LinkedIn home and click the Sales Nav button to start.

Further steps are explained below.

How to Search for Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once you’re on your Sales Navigator home, click on the button that says “Advanced Search” and then

Once you’re on your Sales Navigator home, click on the button that says “Advanced Search” and then “Search for leads” on the drop-down menu that appears.

A window will open with several filters and text fields. 

Essentially, what we’re trying to do here is to search for B2B leads at a granular level. You want to hyper-target so you don’t waste your time on your Linkedin outreach campaign.

Here’s what you should know about the text fields and filters you see on your screen (don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you). 

Boolean Search: The Secret Sauce

Think of boolean search as a really simple programming language that you use to avoid messaging wrong leads. It gives you an UNFAIR advantage over a majority of sales reps.

LinkedIn boolean search works with the help of punctuation and logical connectors:

  • AND
  • OR
  • NOT
  • “ ” 
  • ( )

Now, remember the window that opened in the previous step with lots of filters? The boolean expression works on the following LinkedIn Navigator filters:

  • Keywords
  • (Job) Title
  • School
  • Company
  • First Name
  • Last Name

Read on to learn how to make a boolean expression for these text fields. 

Example 1: Suppose you want to find real estate agents in Florida, United States. Here are the Titles a real estate agent might use on their LinkedIn profile: 

  • Real Estate Agent
  • Real Estate Broker
  • Real Estate Associate

But you only want to reach out to a residential real estate agent. Not the commercial ones. Or the law real estate agents.

Here’s what you would type in the boolean (and set the Location filter):

((“Real Estate Agent” OR “Real Estate Broker” OR “Real Estate Associate”) NOT “Commercial” NOT “Law”)

Example 2: Now, maybe you ONLY want to reach out to real estate agents in the commercial industry. The expression becomes:

(“Real Estate Agent” AND “Commercial”)

Example 3: Maybe you want to pitch to medical doctors but not psychologists or psychotherapists. The expression becomes:

((“Dr.” OR “Doctor” OR “Medical Doctor” OR “Doc”) NOT “Psychologist” NOT “Psychotherapist”)

When you use boolean with the other search filters that LinkedIn Sales Navigators provides, you’ll be able to tap into leads that weren’t visible earlier. 

Here are some other valuable filters under the “Advanced Search” functionality of LinkedIn Navigator that you should know about:

Keywords

Keywords are words your prospect has used anywhere on their LinkedIn profile or inside the content they’ve posted. 

For example, suppose one user posted, “I’m not happy with my doctor.” And another person has put the word “doctor” on their Title. So when you use the boolean expression in the Keywords field, Sales Navigator will list both of them.

But the problem is that only the second person is your ideal prospect, and the first user is just a random user complaining about their doctor. If you were to automatically InMail both people, you’ll lose your precious credit on a dead lead. Sadly, LinkedIn gives only 50 InMail credits to Sales Navigator Core subscribers.

Now you understand why this strategy isn’t totally effective. That’s why we recommend using a boolean with Title and Keywords together (more on the Title filter near the end).

Custom Lists

The next filter you’ll see is the Custom Lists.

Lists are a great way to segment, manage, and organize leads. You can save leads from searches you perform on LinkedIn Navigator into your custom list and segment your pipeline according to your preferences. 

LinkedIn provides a helpful article on how you can view and manage your lists.

Geography

Geography is another beneficial filter that helps you narrow down your hunt. For example, if you’re looking for doctors in Florida, United States, you can simply put this location.

Remember, the more precise location you put here, the better quality leads you’re likely to encounter.

Seniority Level (To target decision-makers)

One of the critical things to master in Sales Navigator is to target decision-makers. If you’re learning how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for the first time – pay attention.

As a sales rep, you want to reach decision-makers directly, especially if you’re in the B2B space. 

Decision makers are the people or groups of individuals who make a decision (the simplest definition we could tell). For B2B leads, these are C-suite executives (CEO, CTO, COO, etc.), VPs, managers, directors, and founders.

The Seniority Level filter of the LinkedIn Navigator helps you target your industry’s decision-makers.

Years Of Experience

The Years Of Experience filter allows you to search for leads and sort them according to their years of experience in the industry (and not as per their current position or company). There are several cases where this filter is helpful.

Let’s take the case of the hospitality industry. Waiters hop jobs and very often change their workplace. But if you search with this filter inside Sales Navigator, you’ll find them, unlike when you search with the current position or company filter.

Title

Though the Title filter comes at the very last on the Sales Navigator Advanced Search popup window, it’s probably the most important.

Why?

Because you’ll be leveraging the power of boolean searches here to get an UNFAIR advantage over others.

But first, let’s show why typing it in the regular way isn’t idea (instead of using boolean expressions with the Title filter):

When you search for “Real Estate Agent,” you’ll get many results. Notice that many of them aren’t the prospects you want to target. 

For instance, you’ll notice results with titles like real estate broker or real estate appraiser. Now let us show you how the whole thing changes with boolean searches.

Recall the boolean expression we devised above in this article. It was:

((“Real Estate Agent” OR “Real Estate Broker” OR “Real Estate Associate”) NOT “Commercial” NOT “Law”)

Copy and paste this exact term into the Title filter. Hit search, and you’ll see that those vague results are gone. You’ll also notice that the number of results has significantly decreased.

Congrats, you’ve just reached an atomic level and now seeing the leads that’ll convert like anything.

Other Filters to Use in Your Search

Industry

The Industry filter of Sales Navigator, as the name says, will help you search the leads from a specific industry. These could be Financial Services, Computer Software, Hospital & Health Care, Retail, Higher Education, and many more.

Now, if we’re searching for doctors, our lead will likely be in the Hospital & Health Care industry. So, you go for it.

But we don’t recommend using this filter very often. This is why:

People change their industries all the time. Someone who has studied law and maybe worked in the law industry for a few years is now an educator. And the Sales Navigator will show you this lead even if they’re no longer in the industry — so it’s not a foolproof way to find people in relevant industries with complete accuracy. 

Years in Current Company

Years in Current Company is another LinkedIn filter that allows you to see the leads according to the years a person has been working in their current company.

We don’t recommend going on with this filter unless you know what you’re doing. People change their companies several times. 

Years in Current Position

The leads you’re going after should be able to afford your services. Unfortunately, there’s no way of telling that on LinkedIn. However, with the Years in Current Position filter, you can filter out to see the people according to the number of years they’ve spent in their current position or role.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Wrapping Up

There you have it—our complete guide on how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The idea is simple; once you understand what those filters under the Advanced Search tab do, you’ll be able to find better than most people do.

Now, you’re armed with the knowledge of critical filters that you see in LinkedIn Navigator, including how to use boolean searches to reach a granular level of lead generation.

We work with individuals and companies to experience rapid growth and skyrocket their profits through intelligent client acquisition. Whether you’re searching for leads for your business or on your company’s behalf, Scaling With Systems is here to help. We build a profitable client acquisition system that is guaranteed to give you new clients consistently.

If you’re serious about finding a winning solution for your business, book a free consultation call to speak with our friendly advisors.

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