Sales Navigator Core to Advanced: Part 3 – Data, Search & Insights
For most people, the search in Sales Navigator is what attracts them to using it. But how you use the search, how you manipulate the data, and the insights you bring into Sales Navigator will help to determine your success with using Sales Navigator for winning new clients.
In today’s article, the features I’ll be reviewing are all about data, search, and insights.
Data, Search & Insights
Smart Links
Smart Links are available from the main Sales Navigator navigation. They are trackable links within which you can bundle up to 15 documents or links into one ‘packaged link’ that you can share on LinkedIn or externally.
When someone clicks on the link you share with them (from your profile, in your content, in a message), you will receive incredibly detailed engagement metrics.
You can see the following information:
Who viewed your Smart Link
What pages they viewed, for how long and when.
If they downloaded documents
If they forwarded the Smart Link to someone else
This information is incredibly powerful because it shows who has shown interest in what, and how much interest they have shown.
As you can see in the main part of the image below, it shows what people download, and in the bottom-right image, you can see that pages 11 and 12 are of particular interest.
Clicking a Smart Link shows real intent because those who do so must agree to have their activity insights sent to the Smart Link owner. No one does this unless they really want to see the information.
In this way, Smart Links uncovers those who are really interested in what you offer and identifies invisible lurkers who often follow your content, but may not normally engage with it.
💡Smart Links are great for giving prospects access to valuable leads, but consider the other use cases for them. These include: proposals to potential clients – did they read it at the time, or did they come back months later (could mean renewed interest); your own team and sales enablement tools – a centralised area which identifies who uses the resources, etc.
Upload your Book of Business
Identifying the best target accounts is paramount for winning clients on LinkedIn. With the Sales Navigator Advanced plan, there is a feature called ‘Book of Business’ that enables you to import accounts into Sales Navigator.
Adding accounts can be done on the home page (see image below) or from the Accounts page through the ‘Upload accounts’ button.
The process of adding your account list to Sales Navigator involves creating a CSV file with at least the account name (see the image below), then uploading it. You can add your entire book of business with just a few clicks.
By adding accounts, you save them in Sales Navigator. In doing so, Sales Navigator starts tracking them, and you will see various alerts and receive lead recommendations.
💡 Regularly review and update your book of business (using the tool or manually) to reflect changes in your pipeline. Organisation is key to knowing where to focus.
Advanced Search Filters
When you upgrade from Sales Navigator Core to Advanced, you get a couple more filters in the search that are found across the Sales Navigator platform. Let’s look at the upgrades:
Account Search
With the Account search, you get a filter called Buyer intent.
Lead Search
In the Lead search, you get the Buyer intent filter ‘Account has buyer intent’ and another called ‘Category interest’.
This is just the top sections of the lead search – wanted to minimise scrolling!
So what do these mean?
Buyer Intent
‘Buyer intent’ is the estimated level of interest that accounts and leads in that company are showing to your company. The ‘Buyer intent’ scoring is based on 180+ distinct insight signals, combined to produce an overall score. These signals come from:
LinkedIn activity: engagement with posts, new connections to company employees, viewing company profiles, and following your company page.
LinkedIn Advertising activity: clicking on an ad, commenting, reacting, or filling out a lead gen form. LinkedIn messaging activity: whenever a person at an account accepts or declines an InMail.
Outside of LinkedIn: website visits via the LinkedIn Insights tag.
LinkedIn grades them into 4 levels of Buyer Intent in Sales Navigator:
High
Moderate
Neutral
Negative
High and Moderate indicate the account’s intent is above baseline (Neutral). This is a signal that people at an account have been researching your company and are worth reaching out to. This is a huge time-saver and a prompt on where to best focus your attention.
You can find ‘Buyer Intent’ information in a number of places in Sales Navigator. As well as being in the search, as we’ve seen, it is visible on the ‘Accounts’ section of the Sales Navigator menu, it is on individual Account pages, and it is available on the home page as an account alert, as well as in the ‘Highlights for you’ section.
This is what it looks like on the Accounts page:
Category interest
‘Category interest’ is a feature that helps sellers find companies interested in buying different products. These product category intent insights are calculated from recent LinkedIn activity (including product research) and member profile data (including group membership and profile data).
To use this feature, you can either use the search or review the 350 sub-categories within the 43 product categories to select the relevant ones for what you offer.
Once you have selected the relevant product categories, you can find those who have an interest in these categories in 2 ways:
1. Account page
First, add your product category, then see which accounts have category intent.
2. Buyer intent search filter
Add your category, and the search will show those people with ‘category interest’. Use other filters to hone in on your target audience with this category interest.
NB Please note that the majority of product categories are software-related, and those interested in these software products may also be interested in your related services.
💡Buyer intent & Category interest Combo
‘Buyer intent’ and ‘Category interest’ can be used together to identify the best options to focus on:
Moderate or High Buyer Intent + Category Interest: Accounts are interested in your company and your product category. The best opportunities to focus on.
Moderate or High Buyer Intent + No Category Interest: Accounts are interested in your company, but haven’t yet shown interest in your product category. These are good opportunities to look at.
Neutral Buyer Intent + Category Interest: This company is interested in a solution like yours, but hasn’t heard of your company. A potential opportunity.
In summary – Part 3: Data, Search & Insights
The Data, Search & Insights feature upgrades included with the Advanced Sales Navigator plan will benefit companies in several ways.
Smart Links add an additional layer of insights and can uncover the extent of interest in a particular topic. You need to create something of value that your ideal audience wants to see.
The Book of Business feature can help add your target clients, so think about which companies are the best to add. Sometimes you can find this out best from the Account search itself. The usefulness of this will be determined by who you are.
The additional Search filters (Buyer intent & Category intent) can be extremely useful for identifying companies and people who are interested in your company, as well as companies that are interested in a software niche (& whom you may serve with a service).
In summary – Parts 1, 2 & 3
In this series of 3 articles reviewing ‘Should You Upgrade from Sales Navigator Core to Advanced’, we have gone from AI features you get in the first article, to the Team collaboration features in the second, and finally the Data, Search & Insights in the third.
So is it worth upgrading?
The Sales Navigator Advanced plan obviously has more features. We have seen this throughout the 3 articles. There is more actionable intelligence and information to save time and identify whom to focus on. There are collaboration features that help with organisation and reach.
Teams
For teams, it’s a no-brainer for me. If you have 2 or more in your team, upgrade. Advanced is more expensive, but only by about 25% (2+ licenses unlock a 15% discount). You will get all the benefits of all the features that come with upgrading.
Individuals
For individuals, it’s a tougher call. You don’t get the 15% discount for having multiple accounts, and the team features aren’t relevant. That said, the AI features and the Data, Search & Insights features are powerful, and if you are a dedicated user, you will get your value and return in spades.
As with all tools, the more you use them, the more you will benefit from them and generate an ROI. If you’re not currently utilising Sales Navigator Core to the full, don’t upgrade to Advanced. Master Core first before you add more cost and features to learn and use.
Lastly, if you’re not sure you’re utilising Sales Navigator to its full potential, send me a message with what you’re struggling with.
Sales Navigator Core to Advanced: Part 3 – Data, Search & Insights
Sales Navigator Core to Advanced: Part 3 – Data, Search & Insights
For most people, the search in Sales Navigator is what attracts them to using it. But how you use the search, how you manipulate the data, and the insights you bring into Sales Navigator will help to determine your success with using Sales Navigator for winning new clients.
In today’s article, the features I’ll be reviewing are all about data, search, and insights.
Data, Search & Insights
Smart Links
Smart Links are available from the main Sales Navigator navigation. They are trackable links within which you can bundle up to 15 documents or links into one ‘packaged link’ that you can share on LinkedIn or externally.
When someone clicks on the link you share with them (from your profile, in your content, in a message), you will receive incredibly detailed engagement metrics.
You can see the following information:
This information is incredibly powerful because it shows who has shown interest in what, and how much interest they have shown.
As you can see in the main part of the image below, it shows what people download, and in the bottom-right image, you can see that pages 11 and 12 are of particular interest.
Clicking a Smart Link shows real intent because those who do so must agree to have their activity insights sent to the Smart Link owner. No one does this unless they really want to see the information.
In this way, Smart Links uncovers those who are really interested in what you offer and identifies invisible lurkers who often follow your content, but may not normally engage with it.
💡Smart Links are great for giving prospects access to valuable leads, but consider the other use cases for them. These include: proposals to potential clients – did they read it at the time, or did they come back months later (could mean renewed interest); your own team and sales enablement tools – a centralised area which identifies who uses the resources, etc.
Upload your Book of Business
Identifying the best target accounts is paramount for winning clients on LinkedIn. With the Sales Navigator Advanced plan, there is a feature called ‘Book of Business’ that enables you to import accounts into Sales Navigator.
Adding accounts can be done on the home page (see image below) or from the Accounts page through the ‘Upload accounts’ button.
The process of adding your account list to Sales Navigator involves creating a CSV file with at least the account name (see the image below), then uploading it. You can add your entire book of business with just a few clicks.
By adding accounts, you save them in Sales Navigator. In doing so, Sales Navigator starts tracking them, and you will see various alerts and receive lead recommendations.
💡 Regularly review and update your book of business (using the tool or manually) to reflect changes in your pipeline. Organisation is key to knowing where to focus.
Advanced Search Filters
When you upgrade from Sales Navigator Core to Advanced, you get a couple more filters in the search that are found across the Sales Navigator platform. Let’s look at the upgrades:
Account Search
With the Account search, you get a filter called Buyer intent.
Lead Search
In the Lead search, you get the Buyer intent filter ‘Account has buyer intent’ and another called ‘Category interest’.
So what do these mean?
‘Buyer intent’ is the estimated level of interest that accounts and leads in that company are showing to your company. The ‘Buyer intent’ scoring is based on 180+ distinct insight signals, combined to produce an overall score. These signals come from:
LinkedIn activity: engagement with posts, new connections to company employees, viewing company profiles, and following your company page.
LinkedIn Advertising activity: clicking on an ad, commenting, reacting, or filling out a lead gen form. LinkedIn messaging activity: whenever a person at an account accepts or declines an InMail.
Outside of LinkedIn: website visits via the LinkedIn Insights tag.
LinkedIn grades them into 4 levels of Buyer Intent in Sales Navigator:
High and Moderate indicate the account’s intent is above baseline (Neutral). This is a signal that people at an account have been researching your company and are worth reaching out to. This is a huge time-saver and a prompt on where to best focus your attention.
You can find ‘Buyer Intent’ information in a number of places in Sales Navigator. As well as being in the search, as we’ve seen, it is visible on the ‘Accounts’ section of the Sales Navigator menu, it is on individual Account pages, and it is available on the home page as an account alert, as well as in the ‘Highlights for you’ section.
This is what it looks like on the Accounts page:
‘Category interest’ is a feature that helps sellers find companies interested in buying different products. These product category intent insights are calculated from recent LinkedIn activity (including product research) and member profile data (including group membership and profile data).
To use this feature, you can either use the search or review the 350 sub-categories within the 43 product categories to select the relevant ones for what you offer.
Once you have selected the relevant product categories, you can find those who have an interest in these categories in 2 ways:
1. Account page
First, add your product category, then see which accounts have category intent.
2. Buyer intent search filter
Add your category, and the search will show those people with ‘category interest’. Use other filters to hone in on your target audience with this category interest.
NB Please note that the majority of product categories are software-related, and those interested in these software products may also be interested in your related services.
💡Buyer intent & Category interest Combo
‘Buyer intent’ and ‘Category interest’ can be used together to identify the best options to focus on:
Moderate or High Buyer Intent + Category Interest: Accounts are interested in your company and your product category. The best opportunities to focus on.
Moderate or High Buyer Intent + No Category Interest: Accounts are interested in your company, but haven’t yet shown interest in your product category. These are good opportunities to look at.
Neutral Buyer Intent + Category Interest: This company is interested in a solution like yours, but hasn’t heard of your company. A potential opportunity.
In summary – Part 3: Data, Search & Insights
The Data, Search & Insights feature upgrades included with the Advanced Sales Navigator plan will benefit companies in several ways.
Smart Links add an additional layer of insights and can uncover the extent of interest in a particular topic. You need to create something of value that your ideal audience wants to see.
The Book of Business feature can help add your target clients, so think about which companies are the best to add. Sometimes you can find this out best from the Account search itself. The usefulness of this will be determined by who you are.
The additional Search filters (Buyer intent & Category intent) can be extremely useful for identifying companies and people who are interested in your company, as well as companies that are interested in a software niche (& whom you may serve with a service).
In summary – Parts 1, 2 & 3
In this series of 3 articles reviewing ‘Should You Upgrade from Sales Navigator Core to Advanced’, we have gone from AI features you get in the first article, to the Team collaboration features in the second, and finally the Data, Search & Insights in the third.
So is it worth upgrading?
The Sales Navigator Advanced plan obviously has more features. We have seen this throughout the 3 articles. There is more actionable intelligence and information to save time and identify whom to focus on. There are collaboration features that help with organisation and reach.
Teams
For teams, it’s a no-brainer for me. If you have 2 or more in your team, upgrade. Advanced is more expensive, but only by about 25% (2+ licenses unlock a 15% discount). You will get all the benefits of all the features that come with upgrading.
Individuals
For individuals, it’s a tougher call. You don’t get the 15% discount for having multiple accounts, and the team features aren’t relevant. That said, the AI features and the Data, Search & Insights features are powerful, and if you are a dedicated user, you will get your value and return in spades.
As with all tools, the more you use them, the more you will benefit from them and generate an ROI. If you’re not currently utilising Sales Navigator Core to the full, don’t upgrade to Advanced. Master Core first before you add more cost and features to learn and use.
Lastly, if you’re not sure you’re utilising Sales Navigator to its full potential, send me a message with what you’re struggling with.
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