Who benefits most from LinkedIn Sales Navigator? I have been working with LinkedIn Sales Navigator for quite some time now and I’ve been consulting with decision makers who either have it now or are considering it for their firms and they ask this question.
Sales Navigator is a powerful sales tool plays very well in SOME parts of the LinkedIn user community, while being less important in many others. Let’s explore this here together.
Sales Navigator is a completely different universe than LinkedIn. Users are EITHER in LinkedIn OR they are in Sales Navigator. It is not an extension like a premium account. In fact, many users (myself included) pay for LinkedIn premium accounts IN ADDITION to paying for our Sales Navigator accounts.
Fundamentally these are the most important features of Sales Navigator:
- Search for new prospects (companies and people) on LinkedIn using Lead Builder. This is akin to Advanced Search. The results can be saved as Leads.
- With LinkedIn’s help, find new decision makers within these firms and save them as Leads for follow-up.
- Monitor the activity of your Leads and Accounts and engage them with a Like, Comment or Share. This collection of activity data is just not possible without Sales Navigator. The work to do this is simply too much for anyone.
- Utilize InMails to reach out to people deeper in your network. A LinkedIn premium account can also do this.
- Accounts in Salesforce.com can also appear in Sales Navigator.
- The company can pay for and manage the Sales Navigator licenses.
The Top Feature of Sales Navigator
From my consulting with sales managers and VP’s of sales, the top feature seems to be the ability to uncover new decision makers in targeted accounts, especially LARGE accounts. If you call on smaller firms, it isn’t too hard to identify the decision maker. Large accounts are another animal all together.
It only takes finding one extra decision maker that makes one extra deal happen to make the entire LinkedIn Sales Navigator program worthwhile. It really solves some big headaches for hunters and farmers.
Big firms are really hard to sell to. They have lots of divisions, each with it’s own set of decision makers. More divisions means more upper management and these individuals, while ON LinkedIn, are generally less visible and can be hard to learn about.
Enter Sales Navigator to help uncover these additional decision makers for you. It will find them and suggest you save them as a Lead. It will then let you monitor their activity so you can engage them indirectly. When you like or comment on something they have posted, it gets noticed. When you send that InMail or reach out and call them later on, it is better received.
So, who benefits the most from Sales Navigator?
Lots of people benefit from Sales Navigator, but it’s companies that call on large firms, perhaps those with over 5,000 employees, that really benefit the most. This tool helps them discover previously unknown decision makers and it provides a nifty system to engage with them. You might be a smaller firm calling on larger firms or you might be large firm as well. It’s the size of your CUSTOMERS that ultimately help you decide if LinkedIn Sales Navigator is right or you.
Many firms receive a simple training on Sales Navigator from LinkedIn. It’s a nice overview of what the menu options are. Integrated Alliances takes it MUCH FURTHER with a curriculum-based approach to implementing LinkedIn and Sales Navigator in sales teams. We’ve been training sales teams and consulting with marketing and sales management since 2006.
If you would like to discuss your team and how they can close more deals using LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Social Selling, sign up for a free 30-minute call at www.ScheduleWithMike.com.
Mike O’Neil is the world’s first LinkedIn trainer and Integrated Alliances is the world’s first Social Media consulting firm. This tenure is unmatched and the insight it brings to the table is equally unmatched anywhere in the world.