How LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you work smarter (even if you're not in Sales)
I've been an on and off LinkedIn Sales Navigator user over the years, but since starting up Brightside I thought I would give it some proper attention.
Previously, the typical pattern was something like this...
Get LinkedIn Premium trial (handing over credit card details).
Have a quick look and think, "this looks useful."
Don't get around to doing much with it.
Forget to cancel subscription, so have it for another month.
Have another poke around and say, "this really does look useful, I must find the time."
Realise I won't find the time and cancel.
Sound familiar?
Well, in 2020 I broke the cycle and started to use it properly. My incentive was working with more sales executives, who generally get it as part of their roles. I knew I needed to be at least as good as them at it.
I soon realised that many were basically going through the same cycle as me and not using it much.
Which is a shame, because I've since discovered it's an incredibly useful tool.
What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium version of LinkedIn designed to help sales execs get insight into their prospects. But in my view, it's something lots more people, beyond sales, should look at.
I've sometimes described LinkedIn as "a personal CRM system that updates itself". LinkedIn Sales Navigator takes that up several notches.
Here, you can make way more detailed searches about prospects and organise them in lists, with notes.
In some ways LinkedIn Sales Navigator reminds me of Amazon Prime. The search functionality is like free delivery, but actually the value is in looking at the whole package of features.
These include:
Filtering searches by demographics, interests, company headcount and more. You can even pre-load your sales preferences for the types of companies you're looking for
Creating lists of people or companies you're interested in, to keep a closer watch
The ability to look at people without them knowing you're looking at them
See everyone who's looking at you within the main LinkedIn platform
Send messages to people you're not already connected to (called InMail)
Create "Smart Links" that give you additional metrics whether your audiences read your embedded content
Alerts for your leads or target accounts
LinkedIn Learning courses (there's tons here alone)
Powerful insights about businesses anywhere in the world
So you can see there's more to LinkedIn than InMail credits. The real power of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is being able to get really quick audience insights.
For example, if you want to know how many people there are that display certain characteristics (e.g. company size, job titles, groups, interests, whether they're active on LinkedIn etc.), you can create this in a matter of minutes.
Then it's just a case of saving this down as a list to review on an ongoing basis and spot opportunities for engagement. I've talked before about getting outside your existing bubble. This is a really easy way of doing just that.
On this basis you can see how LinkedIn has uses beyond Sales, but to areas such as Marketing, Planning, PR, influencers and business owners.
There is also a premium version of LinkedIn for recruitment and HR professionals, but that's a separate product called LinkedIn Recruiter.
So, is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth it?
Let's start with the cost. LinkedIn Sales Navigator costs £58.32 per month, or you can buy an annual subscription for £499.90. There's also a team version, which cuts down the cost per seat considerable.
Whether you're a freelancer or running a team a sales executives, this can seem like a pricey addition to your list of online subscriptions; so to answer the question, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is only worth it if you use it.
I use it primarily for tracking what people who are outside of my immediate bubble are up to (for engagement opps), and keeping up to date with what target companies are doing. I also use it fairly regularly for planning work, around comms strategy.
Your use might be different. It's a no-brainer if you're in sales, but for other roles I think it could be helpful, as it saves time on other tasks, such as doing research manually. But like all subscriptions, you've got to give it some time to get the value back.
Sales Navigator far from perfect, however. I would love to see better features on lists, such as highlighting their recent activity (Hootsuite list-style) and there could easily be social listening functionality (Brandwatch style). Hopefully the product development teams are on this already!
Looking at how 2021 is shaping up with the pandemic far from over, I see a big move towards smart social media use. With so much more content being created, it's not only important to say things that are more compelling that everyone else, but do so in a targeted fashion. Sales Navigator is an important tool in your arsenal for doing that.