What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?: A review

Social selling has transformed the sales landscape, making it easier than ever before to connect with prospects and discover leads organically. LinkedIn, the standard social platform for professional networks and relationships, has long been a popular and effective place to find and nurture sales leads. 

Now, LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers sales organizations even more power to discover leads and manage their pipelines effectively.

Here’s everything you need to know about LinkedIn Sales Navigator to determine whether it’s right for you.

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn has both free and paid versions. There are paid licenses for recruiters, job seekers, professionals, and now sales reps. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s paid sales solution.  

It is a sales management tool designed to help sales reps tap into LinkedIn’s extensive network more effectively and, ultimately, land more (and better) deals. 

Here’s how...

Top features 

Sales Navigator has some impressive premium features. These are a few of the most impactful on each plan: 

Core

With the Core subscription, members can access: 

• 50 InMail messages per month
• 10,000 saved leads
• Advanced lead and company search
• Custom lists
• Lead and account alerts
• Notes and tags

InMail is a key feature for salespeople who are on the hunt for leads. The free version of LinkedIn doesn’t allow users to directly message people outside of their network. With Sales Navigator, reps can now reach out to fresh leads that they may not be directly connected with yet, a feature that gives salespeople more opportunities to discover and build relationships with leads outside their direct network.

Additionally, the ability to use advanced searches, save leads, create custom account lists, and add notes or tags to leads and accounts makes it easier for sales reps to manage their pipeline and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Advanced

The Advanced plan includes everything under the Core plan plus a few more key features:

• TeamLink and TeamLink Extend
• Team collaboration tools
• Embedded profile integrations 
• Smart Links

The Advanced plan gives users access to TeamLink and TeamLink Extend, integration with their workflows, collaboration functionality such as sharing lists and searches, and Smart Links for tracking content engagement. 

TeamLink enables reps to view and search their team’s connections to identify who has first-degree connections with a prospect in the pipeline. Reps can then reach out to their team members for a warm introduction to the lead, giving them a more likely path to sale. 

Advanced Plus

The Advanced Plus plan has all the best features from the Core and Advanced plans as well as: 

• CRM integrations
• Data validation 
• ROI reporting 

Advanced Plus plans are designed for teams of 10 or more. Users can integrate with their CRM and measure their impact on revenue. 

Benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator

The extensive premium features and sales resources available on Sales Navigator bring several significant benefits. As you learn how to use Sales Navigator more effectively, you’ll enjoy even more benefits, including greater efficiency and improved sales results across the board.

Here are just a few benefits of using Sales Navigator.

CRM integrations

Sales Navigator integrates with several popular sales apps and customer relationship management programs, including:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• G2
• Outreach

Simply import your Sales Navigator data into your preferred CRM and get to work! This makes it even easier to manage your pipeline and track your sales data from one location. 

Targeted searches

The Sales Navigator advanced search function gives reps the power to more narrowly target their ideal leads and discover relevant connections. 

Sales reps can choose from a large number of filters for people and/or companies including: 

• Keywords
• Geographic location (by region or state)
• Job title
• Company name
• Company size
• Company type (e.g., public, private, non-profit)
• Group membership
• School
• Years of experience
• Industry
• Job opportunities
• Number of followers

These premium search filters save reps time by helping them target the most relevant connections so they can focus on more valuable sales tasks, like building relationships and closing deals. 

Automated lead generation

The Lead Recommendations feature suggests relevant leads based on your sales preferences, search history, profile views, and past saved leads. 

This is a great feature because it saves reps a step in the sales process, helping them fill their pipeline faster with relevant connections. 

Powerful sales insights

The beauty of Sales Navigator is that the more you use it, the more data it can use to deliver valuable insights. 

As you search for prospects, save leads, and make connections, Sales Navigator will keep you posted on updates in your network such as: 

• Job changes
• Company updates
• Relevant connections and warm leads

Access to out-of-network connections

One of the biggest benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator (Advanced plan) is the opportunity to extend your sales reach outside your direct network. 

Normally, you can only view the limited profiles of people outside your network. Sales Navigator lets members “unlock” that information so you can better understand your leads and make more meaningful connections. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost

As mentioned previously, LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers three pricing tiers: Core, Advanced, and Advanced Plus. The size of your team or organization and your goals will help determine which plan (and corresponding features) is right for you. 

Each tier has a Monthly or Annual price plan—both with a free trial or demo.*

The month-to-month plan is slightly more expensive than the annual commitment. While you can cancel anytime, your annual plan remains effective until the end of the year for which you paid. 

So if you want to try Sales Navigator for a shorter term (i.e., less than a year), the month-to-month plans may be a better fit. You can always upgrade to an annual plan later.

*Note: Free trials are only available to members who are not currently on a LinkedIn paid subscription plan and haven’t done a free trial on LinkedIn within the last year. Free trials are also not available for Advanced Plus plans. 

Let’s break it down: 

Per license, a Core plan costs $99.99/month per license or $959.88 billed annually as one payment. 

Per license, the Advanced plan costs $159.99/month or $1,500 billed annually as one payment.

For teams of 10 or more sales professionals, LinkedIn recommends the Advanced Plus plan, which requires a custom quote. 

Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth it?

In a word: yes. 

While sales organizations with little experience selling on LinkedIn should test the waters on the free version first, Sales Navigator is a natural next step for teams who are ready to take their pipelines to the next level.