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Sales Navigator is a powerful tool designed to help users refine their LinkedIn searches and target leads with much greater precision.
If you’ve ever used LinkedIn’s regular search, you’ve likely experienced its limitations. The basic version of LinkedIn allows you to filter by attributes like company, location, and job title, but it lacks the depth needed for effective lead generation. Sales Navigator goes far beyond these constraints, enabling you to segment your audience more accurately, which ultimately leads to higher engagement and better campaign performance.
To get started with Sales Navigator, you first need access to the platform, which is a premium add-on to LinkedIn. If you haven’t used it before, LinkedIn often provides a free 30-day trial to new users, allowing you to explore its features before committing.
Once activated, the interface presents two main tabs: Leads and Accounts. The Leads tab is where you can search for and save potential prospects, while the Accounts tab focuses on identifying and tracking entire companies. Both sections provide powerful filtering options that make it easier to target the right people at the right companies.
When searching for leads, Sales Navigator offers far more advanced filtering options than the standard LinkedIn search.
You’ll find the same basic filters as on LinkedIn standard search : the current job title, the geography, industry etc…
The real value comes with the other filters, for example, instead of manually selecting different job titles like “Marketing Manager,” “CMO,” or “Head of Marketing,” you can simply use the “Job Function” filter. LinkedIn automatically categorizes professionals based on their function, which means you don’t need to worry about including every possible job title variation.
Another key feature is the ability to use negative filters.
In LinkedIn’s regular search, you can only include people based on certain criteria, but with Sales Navigator, you can also exclude specific groups.
For example, if you’re looking for marketing professionals but don’t want to target those working in sales, you can refine your audience by selecting “Marketing” as the function and excluding “Sales.”
This added level of filtering allows you to remove irrelevant profiles and ensures that your list consists only of high-potential leads.
In addition to job functions, seniority level is another crucial filter.
LinkedIn automatically classifies users into categories such as Owner, Partner, Entry-Level, Senior, Manager, and CXO.
Unlike standard LinkedIn search, which requires you to manually infer seniority based on job titles, Sales Navigator provides a structured way to segment decision-makers from junior-level employees.
This is especially useful when you need to reach key stakeholders within a company.
Beyond these core filters, Sales Navigator also introduces buyer intent and recent activity filters, which are particularly useful for outreach.
If someone has visited your company’s LinkedIn page or your LinkedIn profile in the last 30 days, they are likely already interested in what you offer.
Another valuable targeting method is tracking recent job changes.
When a professional moves to a new company, they often look to implement new tools, strategies, or services.
Sales Navigator allows you to filter for people who have changed jobs in the last 30 days, allowing you to engage with them at the perfect moment.
You can also use this information as an icebreaker in your outreach messages, mentioning their new role to start a more natural conversation.
These advanced filtering capabilities already make Sales Navigator significantly more powerful than LinkedIn’s standard search, but what makes it even more effective is its ability to combine lead and account-based targeting.
Next, we’ll explore how to conduct precise account-based marketing (ABM) using Sales Navigator to ensure that you’re reaching the right companies before narrowing down to the right people
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a highly targeted approach that focuses on identifying and engaging with specific companies rather than just individual leads.
Instead of reaching out to a broad audience, ABM ensures that your outreach efforts are directed at companies that fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Sales Navigator is an excellent tool for implementing this strategy because it allows you to filter and track companies based on precise attributes, making it much easier to focus on high-value accounts.
To get started with ABM in Sales Navigator, the first step is to define your ideal company profile (Module 1). This means identifying the characteristics of businesses that are most likely to benefit from your product or service. Some key attributes to consider include company size, industry, location, and growth trends.
First filters you can filter by local currency the companies’ annual revenue you want to target, then you should use “Company headcount filter” to filter companies by size. Simple and effective to match your current ICP
If you’re targeting fast-growing companies, for example, you can use Sales Navigator’s “Company Headcount Growth” filter to find businesses that have been expanding their teams in recent months.
This is particularly useful because companies that are growing rapidly often have increasing needs for new tools and services.
You can filter for companies currently hiring, as businesses that are actively recruiting in certain departments may indicate a need for related services.
Once you have identified a list of high-potential accounts, the next step is to find key decision-makers within these companies.
Sales Navigator allows you to seamlessly switch from an account-based view to a lead-based view.
By selecting a company, you can immediately access a list of employees and filter them by seniority level, job function, and engagement activity.
This ensures that you are not only reaching out to the right company but also targeting the most relevant individuals within that organization.
One of the best ways to increase your chances of a response is by using shared connections and warm introductions.
Sales Navigator allows you to see if you have mutual connections with decision-makers, which you can leverage for warm introductions. If you don’t have direct connections, you can still personalize your outreach by referencing shared interests, industry trends, or even their company’s recent news.
ABM with Sales Navigator is not just about finding the right companies, it’s also about tracking and engaging with them effectively.
Sales Navigator allows you to save accounts to lists, monitor their latest updates, and receive alerts when key employees change jobs or post on LinkedIn. This makes it easier to time your outreach efforts strategically.
Instead of reaching out blindly, you can wait for the perfect moment, such as when a company secures new funding, expands its team, or engages with relevant content.
By using Sales Navigator’s account-based targeting, you ensure that your sales and outreach efforts are focused on the right businesses, maximizing the efficiency of your campaigns.
Next, we’ll dive deeper into how to refine your searches even further using Boolean search techniques.
If you have not taken the previous course or if you’re not familiar with booleans, you can find an introduction to Boolean searches in Module 2 – Chapter 2.
Now that you understand the logic behind Boolean operators, it’s time to put them to use directly in your Sales Navigator lead search. Boolean search allows you to go beyond rigid filters and get very specific about the people you’re looking for.
Let’s say you want to target marketing leaders in tech companies, but you’re open to different job titles like “Marketing Director”, “CMO”, or “Head of Marketing”.
With the filters you have 485 results, it’s already good but you can do better!
Instead of listing each one in a separate search, you can combine them using a Boolean string like this:
This search will return anyone whose title includes any of those exact phrases. Now you have 228 leads left.
But let’s say you want to exclude junior profiles, such as assistants. You can add a NOT clause:
This is extremely useful when trying to avoid clutter in your lead list and keep your targeting focused on decision-makers.
Now you have 150 well segmented leads left.
Once your lead search is refined using Boolean logic, you can save that search, or directly import the results into La Growth Machine.
Boolean search is not limited to people, it can also be applied to Account searches on Sales Navigator, and it’s equally powerful.
Let’s take an example, looking for French marketing agencies, between 51-200 employees, using the following keywords :
If you input keywords in an Account search, it will look for matching content within the entire company page, including the Title and description.
As we can see, JVWEB stood out because it used “Search Engine Optimization” keywords.
But reading their description, many new relevant keywords pop up
This brings us to a key concept of Boolean search: it’s a process that you must refine using as many keywords to include and/or exclude.
Do read the first few pages of companies’ descriptions to identify new keywords you hadn’t thought of.
By adding all of them to our Boolean boolean search, I just went from 22 results to 40 results.
Now our Booleans is the following :
And as you keep it up, your keywords may end up like this
And now we have 62 results!
And so on… As you build up your list of keywords, you’ll end up with extremely precise lists of accounts!
Using Booleans this way allows you to identify niche companies that match specific traits, even if LinkedIn doesn’t offer a direct filter for them.
Once you’ve created a highly relevant account list, you can use Sales Navigator to view all current employees, then switch to the Lead tab to find decision-makers within these accounts. From there, you can create an Account List in Sales Navigator and push those leads to La Growth Machine, where you can enrich and plug them into your campaign.
Now, let’s move on to the next course : Building a list using Clay!
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