With over one billion users, LinkedIn is the #1 place for professionals to connect and grow. But with limitless potential leads, where do you even start?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator finds, targets, and contacts people that meet your criteria, making lead generation on LinkedIn a surefire solution when you’re looking to scale.
What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
Sales Navigator is a LinkedIn premium tool designed to help sales professionals find and connect with leads. It has 30 advanced search filters, making it easy to target founders, decision makers that matter.
Is it worth $99.99 per month? LinkedIn users think so, and for good reason.
Sales Navigator users report 42% larger deal sizes when connecting with potential clients, and 59% total revenue boost.
5 Tips for LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead Generation
1. Use Search Filters
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for lead generation, thanks to its advanced search features. It organizes filters into categories like company, role, personal details, buyer intent, recent updates, and workflow.
Here’s how you can use some of the filters to target your market and build a client list:
- Use Current job title to find the exact role you’re looking for.
- Shared experiences helps you find leads with connections to your background, like a shared company or college.
- Looking for local prospects? The Geography filter lets you narrow down by state, city, or even postal code.
- Use the Posted Content filter to find profiles posting or commenting on specific keywords.
- The Recent updates filter highlights leads with job changes, news mentions, or shared posts.
- Check Active within the last 30 days to connect with leads currently active on LinkedIn—perfect for starting real, organic conversations.
Pro tip: Mastering Sales Navigator search filters is just the beginning. Want to take things a step further? Try Boolean search. Boolean search lets you combine keywords with operators like AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and quotation marks to create highly specific queries. The result is exceptionally targeted searches that help you find prospects who perfectly match your ideal customer profile.
2. Create a Lead List
Once your search results are ready, you can handpick leads that match your ideal customer profile and save them to a custom list. This allows you to organize your prospects by criteria like industry, role, or company size. You can add as many leads as you need and manage them all in one place. When you're ready to follow up or check updates, access your saved leads anytime through the “Lead List” tab.
Pro tip: LinkedIn Sales Navigator also has two features, “Save Leads” and “Save Accounts,” to help you track and organize leads and accounts effectively. When you save them, you’ll get instant notifications on LinkedIn activity, like job changes, new roles, or location updates. It’s an easy way to stay informed, streamline your prospecting, and keep your lead gen process on track.
3. Send Connection Requests and InMails
Once you’ve identified potential clients, start by sending connection requests or InMails directly through LinkedIn. InMails lets you bypass connection requests and send messages straight to their inbox, even if you’re not connected.
Keep in mind that Sales Navigator only gives you 50 InMail credits per month, so use them wisely. Always try a connection request first and save InMails as a backup if your request isn’t accepted.
Pro Tip: Make your connection requests personal. Mention a shared experience, comment on something they’ve posted, or bring up a mutual connection. Research shows that 72% of people only respond to messages that feel tailored to them. The more personalized your outreach, the better your chances of building real connections.
4. Set Up Alerts to Stay Engaged
Setting up alerts in Sales Navigator can make engagement easier and more effective. When you add a lead to a list, you’ll receive updates on their job changes, company news, and shared posts so that you can reach out at the right time with relevant conversations.
You can also click the bell icon on their LinkedIn profile to get notified whenever they publish new content. Engaging with their posts by liking or commenting keeps you on their radar and makes your outreach feel more natural. When it’s time to follow-up, your message will stand out as part of an ongoing conversation rather than a cold pitch.
Pro tip: Use the Spotlight feature in Sales Navigator to focus on the right leads. This feature highlights key signals like job changes or someone following your company so you can time your outreach perfectly.
5. Generate Reports and Track Your Progress
Track your progress easily with LinkedIn Sales Navigator's usage reports. Get clear metrics on key activities like InMails sent, acceptance rates, profile views, saved leads, and more. Use these insights to see. Use these insights to spot what’s working, fix what’s not, and connect with the right leads to close deals faster.
Pro Tip: Combine Sales Navigator’s analytics with LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) to measure your LinkedIn presence and lead engagement. A higher SSI score means you’re effectively building relationships and engaging with the right prospects.
Automate LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead Generation with Botdog
LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find and segment the perfect prospects with its powerful database and filters. But there’s one problem: it doesn’t let you export lead lists directly into your automation tool or CRM.
That’s where Botdog comes in. With Botdog, you can instantly turn Sales Navigator searches into ready-to-use leads. Here’s a quick guide to show you how to use Botdog with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to streamline your lead generation.
Step 1: Sign up for a Botdog account and link your Sales Navigator
To get started, sign up for a Botdog account on their website. Once you’ve created your account, you can link your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account to Botdog.
Step 2: Set up your search filters in Sales Navigator
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s advanced search filters to find your target prospects. Customize your search by criteria such as location, industry, job title, and more. Once your search is ready, Botdog will pull leads directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator based on these filters.
Step 3: Export leads and automate messaging
Botdog allows you to instantly export your leads as a CSV file, which can be used in your CRM or other tools. You can also automate messaging to engage prospects. After personalizing your messages, Botdog sends connection requests or InMails automatically, keeping your outreach consistent and efficient.
Step 4: Automate follow-ups and scale your efforts
Botdog’s follow-up features ensure that prospects who haven’t responded get automated reminders. This keeps your pipeline full while you focus on other tasks. You can continue pulling new leads, sending messages, and tracking results without manual effort, making it easy to scale your outreach.
By automating lead capture and outreach, Botdog helps you streamline prospecting, engage the right leads at the right time, and scale your lead generation effortlessly.
Key Takeaways
Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for lead generation can help you find and connect with the right prospects, but knowing how to use it effectively is key to standing out. Here’s what you need to know:
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool for finding leads faster. It comes with 30+ search filters, lead recommendations, and real-time updates to help sales teams connect with key decision-makers. The result? Bigger deals and higher revenue, all thanks to smarter targeting.
- There are five key ways to generate leads with Sales Navigator. Use advanced search filters to find prospects, save and track leads for better organization, send connection requests and InMails strategically, set up alerts for follow-ups, and use analytics to refine your outreach.
- Botdog makes it easier to turn Sales Navigator searches into actionable leads. Since Sales Navigator doesn’t allow direct lead exports, Botdog helps by converting searches into ready-to-use lead lists, automating outreach, and saving time with seamless CRM integration.
When it comes to LinkedIn Sales Navigator lead generation, Botdog takes it a step further by turning searches into actionable leads, automating outreach, and streamlining your workflow. Ready to automate and simplify your lead generation? Sign up for a free trial
