How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Prospecting Like a Savvy SDR
Are you using Sales Navigator to its full prospecting potential? As an SDR, you need to know these eight top tips to meet your quotas.
By Amy Ingraham on July 14, 2021
You can do a lot with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool. But the biggest advantage for SDRs is how good the tool is for prospecting.
You might think you’re already using it like a pro. But are you really using Sales Navigator to its full prospecting potential?
As always, the devil is in the detail. We know that dishing out non-personalized messages doesn’t work. We’ve all been on the receiving end of a sharply-worded InMail telling us to please, not send any further messages.
That’s where Sales Navigator and precision-based prospecting align. Sales Navigator shouldn’t just be used to find decision-makers. You should use its research-intensive features to help you identify a differentiated value proposition for their company. Then, offer them a solution to their specific challenges.
As a savvy SDR, you need to know how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for prospecting, and then some.
Stay with us as we go through our top eight LinkedIn Sales Navigator tips and tricks. Nail precision-based prospecting, and meet your quotas.
8 SDR tips on how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for prospecting:
1. Target leads that already follow your company’s LinkedIn profile
People who are already following your company’s LinkedIn profile have some exposure to your business; which makes them great potential prospects. Not only are they already familiar with your brand, but they’re likely candidates for ideal customer profiles. Or will be connected to your ideal customer profile within their company.
Bloobirds’ Director of Marketing and Outbound Sales, Marc Gasso, advises SDRs to:
“Reach out to the prospects that are following your LinkedIn page first”.
How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to target leads that follow your company:
First, search for the ideal customer profile or job title that you’re targeting. Then, scroll across the top options to the right-hand side.
There, you’ll find leads that follow your company on LinkedIn. These are great prospects because your initial outreach won’t be completely cold. You could even reference a recent post they liked on your profile or a post they recently published on LinkedIn to start a conversation.
2. Target clients that have changed jobs recently
When you save a list of current leads on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it will notify you when any of those leads change their job. This is a great feature, and it’s well-known and used by almost all SDRs, but using it for a list of clients is something you might not have thought of.
Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to target clients that have recently changed jobs:
SDRs should use the “past not current” filter from the dropdown list to find leads that have switched companies or changed roles at the same company.
However, here’s a pro tip we use at Bloobirds.
Create a list in Sales Navigator with your company’s current clients and add all relevant contacts. As we’ve already mentioned, Sales Navigator will give you an automatic heads-up once a contact leaves their role.
However, let’s say the product champion (but not the decision-maker) of your current client leaves the company and switches to a decision-maker role at another company. Since they have already used your product (and loved it!), engaging with this individual once they’ve switched roles gives you a great opportunity to instigate a conversation about how your tool can benefit their new company.
3. Target active LinkedIn users
Individuals who have higher levels of activity on LinkedIn than average users could indicate that they are ready to enter the buying cycle. Or they’re at least open to having a conversation, and LinkedIn is a platform where they’re already active.
Check out what kind of language they use in their headline and summary. This can be a great indicator of their business style and personality and gives you a base on which to build your opening message.
Once you’ve identified active prospects, use Sales Navigator’s Team Link feature to view how many of your advanced search results are connected to you via your team. This feature gives you the option of seeing how many ready-made warm introductions you can access via your team members.
4. Check out leads that share experiences with you
As we already know, “stranger danger” is a real phenomenon in the prospecting world. Your leads are receiving a bunch of pitches every day, and unless you’ve got a hook, you’re likely to be left on read.
Luckily, Sales Navigator also offers you the “shared experiences” feature. The tool pulls up leads that, in some way, share a common experience with you.
Shared experiences can be anything from attendance at the same school or university, employment at the same company, or belonging to the same LinkedIn groups. Whatever the mutual connection and however deep the shared experiences go, it’s likely that it’ll help you with personalizing your opening introduction and giving you leverage with a potential prospect.
5. Use keywords in your search
We all know how to use Sales Navigator’s many search filters, but many SDRs overlook the importance of using keywords in the search feature.
Most are using the basics, such as job titles. But there’s a whole host of other useful ways to use keywords when searching for new prospects.
Geography is often an important element in searching for leads and accounts (even though the majority of us are prospecting across country lines), so make sure to add that to your filters. However, after that, try utilizing Boolean search tactics to refine your prospect list.
Boolean search involves using the words AND, or, and NOT to help narrow results. For example:
Sales NOT manager – Will produce results for those in sales but will exclude sales managers
Sales OR manager – Will produce results for those in sales and sales managers
Sales AND director – Will produce results that help you target leads that match 2 or more different search criterion (in this case, both sales and directors)
Remember, when using the words AND, OR, and NOT in the LinkedIn Sales Navigator search, they must be capitalized.
6. Use news mentions when targeting enterprise accounts
When targeting larger clients, your standard pitch isn’t likely to hit home the same way it does with smaller prospects.
The “Mentioned in the news in the past 30 days” filter will include big names in the industry. And they might not necessarily realize that they’ve been mentioned in another publication. If they haven’t realized, it’s a great starting point for conversation. And if they have, well, isn’t it nice to be recognized?
Look at the article and see what related anecdotes of your own you can add to make your intro more personalized and engaging.
7. Use LinkedIn Smart Links
Smart Links are another overlooked Sales Navigator search feature. In the era of COVID-19, however, it’s an extremely useful tool that puts a focus on providing value to your prospects.
As their name implies, Smart Links provide users with a smarter way to bundle sales preferences content into one trackable link.
Bloobirds’ Senior SDR & Account Executive, Sebastian Sanders says:
“When you share your content via Smart Links, you receive an email letting you know that your prospects have read it. You also can see which part or section your prospects spent the most time reading. This is useful as it can indicate any number of things about a prospect’s situation, and also gives you ammunition to spark up a productive conversation”.
8. Make sure to nail your first message
Once you’ve got your prospect list built out, now it’s time to start building relationships with them. And there’s nothing more important than a first impression.
“Your first LinkedIn message to a prospect should be short, personalized, related to your customer’s scenario. If your target personas are decision-makers such as directors, presidents, CEOs, then remember that brevity is crucial. So, your message needs to be as attractive as possible to make it stand out and get that open.”
“The next step is to get them to respond. Remember to choose opening lines that are related to what your persona cares about,” which can include both personal and professional interests from their LinkedIn profile.
9. Connect LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Bloobirds
Of course, knowing how to LinkedIn Sales Navigator for prospecting is just the beginning. You also need tools to help you through other pipeline processes — managing pitches, cadences, scheduling, and other channels.
But, copying and pasting LinkedIn messages into your CRM also becomes tedious. Luckily, the end-to-end prospecting platform Bloobirds provides a native LinkedIn integration that helps you seamlessly track and register all your LinkedIn activity in one place, offering a full account overview — including InMails.
Upgrade Your Sales Navigator Prospecting Activities
Prospecting with LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful process. That’s why almost all SDRs use the platform to find and reach out to prospects.
The key is to differentiate yourself from the deluge of other SDRs landing in prospects’ InMail boxes. These LinkedIn Sales Navigator search tips will give you a great starting point. But you also need to think about how to manage the entire pipeline.
Once you’ve engaged a prospect, you don’t want to switch from platform to platform to manage them. Bloobirds can help you reduce the number of tools you need as an SDR by providing one platform for all of your prospecting needs.
