What is Sales Navigator?
Picture this: You’re scrolling through LinkedIn’s free search, trying to find VPs of Sales at SaaS companies with 50-200 employees in the Bay Area. You hit that “You’ve exceeded your commercial use limit” message after 10 searches. Sound familiar?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s premium sales tool designed specifically for people who do this all day. It’s what transforms LinkedIn from a professional networking site into a legitimate prospecting engine.
At its core, Sales Navigator gives you five main capabilities that free LinkedIn just can’t match. You get advanced search with over 40 filters, the ability to save and track leads and accounts, InMail messaging to reach people you’re not connected with, CRM integration so your data flows seamlessly, and sales insights that alert you when prospects make moves worth reaching out about.
This isn’t for everyone. If you’re in B2B sales, work as an account executive, serve as an SDR or BDR, or lead a sales team, Sales Navigator is built for your workflow. If you’re doing inbound sales exclusively or only sending a handful of messages per month, you probably don’t need it.
Plans and Pricing: What You Actually Get
Sales Navigator comes in three tiers, and honestly, most people overthink which one they need.
Sales Navigator Core runs $99 per month if you pay monthly, or $79 per month if you commit annually. This gets you advanced lead search, 50 InMail credits every month, the ability to create lead and account lists, lead recommendations based on who you save, and basic CRM sync. This is the sweet spot for individual reps and small teams just getting started.
Sales Navigator Advanced costs $169 monthly or $135 monthly on an annual plan. The big additions here are TeamLink, which shows you who on your team knows your prospects, Smart Links for tracking content you share, CSV upload for building lists from existing data, team management features, and extended network access. If you’re doing account-based selling or working on a coordinated sales team, these features justify the extra cost.
Sales Navigator Advanced Plus runs about $1,600 per year per seat, though pricing is custom. This is the enterprise tier with deep CRM integration, robust Salesforce sync, data validation features, and enterprise-level support. Unless you’re at a large company with Salesforce as your single source of truth, you probably don’t need this.
The real question isn’t which plan is “best,” it’s which features you’ll actually use. Most sales reps get plenty of value from Core. Teams doing coordinated account-based selling should spring for Advanced. Advanced Plus is for organizations where sales operations depends on bulletproof CRM integration.
Core Features: What Makes Sales Navigator Worth It
Advanced Lead Search
Here’s where Sales Navigator earns its keep. Free LinkedIn lets you search by a few basic filters. Sales Navigator gives you over 40.
You can filter companies by size, industry, revenue, and growth signals. For roles, you can search by title, function, and seniority level. Geography gets granular, from regions down to metro areas. You can use Boolean search with keywords. Activity filters show you who posted recently or changed jobs. Connection filters help you find warm paths through shared connections and TeamLink.
Let me give you a real example. Say you’re selling to sales leaders at mid-sized software companies in the Bay Area who are active on LinkedIn. Your search would look like this: Title contains “VP Sales” OR “Director Sales” OR “Head of Sales”, Company Size is 51-200 employees, Industry is Computer Software, Geography is San Francisco Bay Area, and Posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. That’s six filters working together to create a highly targeted list. Free LinkedIn can’t do this.
Boolean Search: Your Secret Weapon
Boolean search sounds technical, but it’s just a way to combine search terms. You’ve got five operators: AND requires both terms, OR accepts either term, NOT excludes a term, quotes find exact phrases, and parentheses group terms together.
Want to find sales leaders while excluding junior roles? Search for “VP Sales” OR “VP of Sales” OR “Vice President Sales” OR “Head of Sales”, then add NOT (Assistant OR Associate). Boom, you’ve eliminated all the “Assistant VP” and “Associate VP” titles cluttering your results.
Looking for marketing decision makers at B2B companies? Try “CMO” OR “VP Marketing” OR “Director Marketing”, then AND (B2B OR SaaS OR “enterprise software”). You’re now searching for people with those exact titles who mention B2B, SaaS, or enterprise software somewhere in their profile.
The combination of Boolean operators with Sales Navigator’s filters is what creates surgical precision in prospecting.
Lead Lists: Actually Tracking Your Prospects
Here’s what separates people who get value from Sales Navigator from those who waste their money: saved leads.
You create a list with a descriptive name like “Q1 Target Accounts - VP Sales.” You save leads from your searches into that list. Sales Navigator now tracks all activity and changes for those people. You can export the list or sync it to your CRM.
Each list holds up to 10,000 leads. You can create multiple lists for segmentation. On Advanced plans, you can share lists with your team. But here’s the magic: Sales Navigator tells you when saved leads change jobs, post new content, update their profile, or when their company makes news.
Picture this scenario. You save 200 VP Sales leads in January. In March, Sales Navigator alerts you that one of them just changed companies and is now heading sales at a rapidly growing fintech. That’s your signal. New role means new initiatives, new budget, new buying window. You just got a perfect reason to reach out, and you only knew about it because you saved that lead months ago.
Account Lists: The ABM Player’s Best Friend
If you’re doing account-based marketing or selling into enterprise accounts, account lists are crucial.
You search by company criteria to find your ideal customer profile. You save those companies as target accounts. Sales Navigator tracks company news, hiring trends, growth signals, and suggests related companies. Then you find and save the specific people within those accounts that match your buyer persona.
Let’s say you’re targeting fast-growing Series B fintech companies. You build an account list of 50 companies that fit that profile. Sales Navigator shows you when they raise funding, when they’re hiring aggressively, when they’re mentioned in the news. You can then search for all the VPs of Sales, Marketing, or whoever your buyers are, specifically within those 50 accounts. This is how you build and execute an account-based strategy.
InMail: Use It Wisely
Every plan includes 50 InMail credits per month. InMail lets you message people you’re not connected with. Here’s the thing: most people waste their InMails.
InMail isn’t magic. It’s just a way to get your message in front of someone. The same rules apply as any cold outreach. Personalize your message by referencing something from their profile. Keep it short, under 200 words. Have a clear ask. Don’t attach files. Send on Tuesday through Thursday for best results.
Research shows personalized InMails get 50% higher response rates. Messages under 150 words get 25% more responses. A clear call to action adds 30% to your response rate. Mentioning a shared connection boosts responses by 40%.
Here’s the truth: the best salespeople use InMail sparingly. They connect on LinkedIn, engage with content, build relationships, and only use InMail when they have a genuinely good reason to reach out to someone they can’t access any other way.
CRM Integration: Where the Data Lives
Sales Navigator integrates natively with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot. What actually syncs depends on your plan and setup, but typically you’re looking at lead and contact data, activity logging, account matching, and notes and tags.
The integration is important because it prevents Sales Navigator from becoming a data silo. You research in Sales Navigator, save the lead, and it flows into your CRM where the rest of your sales process lives. You log activity in Sales Navigator and it appears in Salesforce. This seamless flow is what makes Sales Navigator part of your actual workflow instead of just another tool you check occasionally.
Search Strategies That Actually Work
Persona-Based Search
Start by defining your buyer persona precisely. Let’s say it’s VP Sales or Director Sales at companies with 50-500 employees in the SaaS industry. Build your search with Title: “VP Sales” OR “Director Sales”, Company headcount: 51-500, Industry: Computer Software. Then refine by adding activity signals. Filter for people who posted in the last 30 days to find active users, or people who changed jobs in the last 90 days to catch new roles.
This approach creates a consistent, repeatable search that matches your ideal customer profile.
Account-Based Search
For account-based selling, flip the script. Start with accounts, not people. Create your target account list first, either by uploading a CSV or searching for companies. Then search for contacts within those specific accounts using the account list filter. Add title filters to find your buyer persona. Map the full buying committee: champions who love you, decision makers who sign the contract, influencers who sway opinion, and potential blockers.
This is how you execute true multi-threading in accounts.
Trigger-Based Search
This is prospecting based on timing signals. Filter for “Changed jobs: Last 90 days” combined with titles containing “VP” or “Director” in your target industry. Why? New leaders launch new initiatives, evaluate new vendors, and shake up existing relationships. They’re in a buying window.
Another trigger: filter for “Posted on LinkedIn: Last 30 days” with your target title and industry. Why? Active users are more responsive. If someone is posting content regularly, they’re checking LinkedIn regularly, which means they’ll actually see your connection request or InMail.
Connection-Based Search
This is the warm path strategy. Search for your target persona, then filter for 2nd degree connections. Check who you share connections with. Request an introduction or at minimum mention the shared connection when you reach out.
A warm introduction beats a cold InMail every single time. Use Sales Navigator to systematically find these warm paths.
Lead Management: Your Daily Workflow
The people who succeed with Sales Navigator build it into their daily routine. Here’s what that looks like.
Every morning, spend 15 minutes on Sales Navigator. Check lead alerts for job changes and new posts. Engage with content from target prospects by liking and commenting thoughtfully. Send 3-5 personalized connection requests. Review and respond to any InMail replies.
Every week, spend an hour refreshing your lead searches to find new people who match your criteria. Add new leads to your lists. Remove stale leads who are no longer relevant. Review engagement metrics to see what’s working.
The process flows like this: define your ideal customer profile criteria, create a search based on those criteria, save qualified leads to a list, research and prioritize those leads, execute outreach through email, InMail, or phone, track engagement and responses, and move qualified leads into your CRM where your formal sales process takes over.
Sales Navigator sits at the top of your funnel. It’s where you identify and qualify leads before they enter your pipeline.
Advanced Techniques for Power Users
TeamLink shows you connections your teammates have to your prospects. When you see a prospect has a TeamLink connection, identify which teammate knows them, request an introduction, and turn a cold outreach into a warm one. This only works if your team is on Advanced plans and everyone has connected their LinkedIn accounts properly.
Smart Links let you upload content like case studies, product decks, pricing sheets, or custom proposals, generate a trackable link, and share it via InMail or email. You can then see who opened it, how long they spent with it, and whether they shared it. This is incredibly useful for measuring engagement with your outreach content.
Lead Recommendations suggest people similar to the leads you’ve already saved. The algorithm learns from your behavior. To optimize recommendations, save high-quality leads consistently, diversify your lists across different personas, review recommendations weekly, and save the good ones while ignoring the bad. Over time, recommendations get better.
Common Mistakes That Kill Your ROI
The first mistake is using generic searches like “Sales” in “Technology.” You get thousands of irrelevant results. Fix this by using specific titles, Boolean operators, and multiple filters to narrow down to your exact target.
The second mistake is not saving leads. People search, look at profiles, but never click “Save.” This means you’re not tracking anyone and missing all the activity signals. Fix this by saving every qualified lead and creating organized lists.
The third mistake is InMail spam. Generic, salesy InMails get ignored. Fix this by personalizing every message, leading with value, and having a specific reason for reaching out.
The fourth mistake is ignoring signals. Sales Navigator tells you when people change jobs or post content, but if you don’t act on those signals, they’re worthless. Set up alerts and make engagement part of your daily routine.
The fifth mistake is not integrating your CRM. If all your data stays in Sales Navigator and never makes it into your system of record, you’ve created a data silo. Fix this by setting up the integration properly from day one.
ROI: What Sales Navigator Actually Delivers
Let’s talk numbers. Sales Navigator Core costs $1,188 per year on an annual plan. What do you get for that?
Time savings are significant. Most reps save about 4 hours per week on research and list building. That’s 200 hours per year. At a conservative $50 per hour value, that’s $10,000.
Better targeting improves your metrics. If Sales Navigator helps you book 10% more meetings through better filtering and timing, and those meetings convert to just 2 extra deals per year at $5,000 each, that’s $10,000 in revenue.
Total value: $20,000. Total cost: $1,188. ROI: about 17x.
Obviously your numbers will differ based on your deal size, close rate, and how effectively you use the tool. But the pattern holds: Sales Navigator pays for itself through time savings and better targeting, not through InMail magic.
Key Takeaways
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is essential for B2B prospecting, but only if you understand what you’re actually paying for.
The advanced search filters let you find your exact ideal customer profile in ways free LinkedIn simply cannot. The ability to save leads and accounts means you’re tracking prospects over time and catching perfect moments to reach out. Your 50 monthly InMail credits give you a way to reach decision makers, though they’re not the main value. CRM sync keeps your data flowing into your actual sales process. The platform is specifically built for account-based selling and enterprise prospecting.
The ROI doesn’t come from having InMail credits. It comes from better targeting, time savings on research, and activity signals that tell you exactly when to reach out. Sales Navigator is a tool for discipline and process, not a shortcut or silver bullet.
Master Boolean search. Build and maintain your lead lists religiously. Act on job change and activity signals immediately. Use InMail strategically, not as spray and pray. Integrate with your CRM so data flows seamlessly. Do these things consistently, and Sales Navigator becomes one of the highest ROI tools in your stack.
Need Help With LinkedIn Prospecting?
We’ve trained hundreds of sales teams on Sales Navigator and helped them build prospecting systems that actually generate pipeline. If you want better prospecting results without wasting time on tactics that don’t work, book a call with our team. We’ll show you exactly how to use Sales Navigator to build a consistent flow of qualified leads.