How to Find Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Complete Tutorial, Tips & Tricks

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerhouse tool that every sales professional, whether a Sales Development Rep, Account Executive, or business owner, should master. Packed with unparalleled data on potential B2B prospects, it’s an essential part of any modern sales tech stack. Yet, many users don’t fully tap into its potential. This masterclass-style guide will walk you through how to leverage Sales Navigator to find targeted leads, build strategic lists, set up alerts, and uncover hidden features that can transform your sales outreach.

Getting Started with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

The first step when using Sales Navigator is understanding the two primary search types:

• Lead Search: Focuses on finding individual prospects.
• Account Search: Targets companies or organizations you want to engage with.

For most sales scenarios, lead searches make the most sense, but account searches have their unique strengths, which we’ll cover later.

How to Search for Leads in Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator offers a robust set of filters to narrow down your search and zero in on the best prospects. Here’s a breakdown of the key filters and how to use them effectively:

Company Filters

• Current and Past Company: Search for leads based on where they currently or previously worked.
• Company Headcount: Filter by the size of the company, which can be crucial for targeting startups or enterprise clients.
• Company Type: Public or private companies.
• Headquarters Location: Narrow down prospects by where their company is based.

Role Filters

• Function: Department such as sales, marketing, finance, HR, etc.
• Job Title: Search for specific roles like VP of Sales or Director of Marketing.
• Seniority Level: Target decision-makers like directors, VPs, or C-level executives.
• Years in Current Company/Position: Useful for understanding tenure and stability.

Spotlight Filters (Buying Triggers)

• People who have changed jobs in the last 90 days – great targets as they may be looking to make changes.
• Leads mentioned in news in the past 30 days – perfect for personalized outreach.
• Leads who have posted on LinkedIn recently – active prospects who engage on the platform.
• Those who follow your company – warmer leads already aware of your brand.
• Shared experiences – connections with similar work history or education, which can be a powerful personalization angle.

Content Keyword Search

A newer and highly valuable feature lets you search leads based on the content they post. For instance, if you want to find people discussing “sales and marketing alignment” or “employee turnover,” you can filter leads who frequently post on these topics. This enables hyper-targeted, context-rich outreach.

Connection Filters

• Connection to You: Find leads directly connected to you.
• Connections of: This is a clever way to prospect through your existing customers or even your competitors' connections. For example, targeting people connected to sales leaders at your competition can open doors to warm leads who may be dissatisfied with their current solution.

Other Useful Filters

• Geography of the prospect.
• Groups they belong to.
• Industry listed on their profile (note: this can be inconsistent, so keyword searching is often better).
• Profile language, school attended, and years of experience.
• Workflow filters such as excluding leads already in your CRM or those already saved in your lead lists.

Example Lead Search Walkthrough

Imagine you want to find senior sales leaders at startups in North America. Here’s how you would refine your search:

1. Set company headcount between 50 and 200 employees.
2. Filter for companies headquartered in the United States.
3. Choose sales and business development as functions to capture all relevant sales roles.
4. Add seniority filters for VP and C-level executives (CXO includes roles like CRO, CTO, CFO, etc.).
5. Specify geography as North America.
6. To narrow further, search for the exact job title “VP of Sales” and exclude related but irrelevant titles like “VP of Sales Operations” or “Regional VP.”
7. Use keyword searches such as “software” to bypass inconsistent industry tags and ensure you’re targeting the right sectors.
8. Set profile language to English for better communication alignment.

Saving this search lets you get alerts when new prospects matching these criteria appear, keeping your pipeline fresh and relevant.

Building and Using Lead Lists

Once you identify prospects, you can save them to lead lists for organized outreach. You can add leads individually or bulk select up to 25 per page. These lists become your go-to groups for targeted campaigns.

However, LinkedIn’s InMail messaging often yields low response rates, and the monthly quota is limited. Instead, a more effective approach is to send connection requests first and engage with prospects by liking or commenting on their posts before messaging them directly.

For outreach beyond LinkedIn, use third-party tools like LeadIQ, ZoomInfo, or Seamless to pull contact details and import leads into your CRM or sales engagement platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, or SalesLoft.

Leveraging Past Customers and CRM Data

A powerful Sales Navigator tactic is searching for past employees of companies you’ve worked with. For example, if Oracle was a previous customer, you can search for people who have worked there and might already be familiar with your product. These leads often have a higher propensity to buy.

Additionally, adding all your current customers and past contacts into Sales Navigator lists allows you to track when they change jobs or post new content, giving you prime opportunities to reconnect and upsell.

Account Searches: Targeting Companies Strategically

Account searches let you find companies based on attributes like:

• Annual revenue
• Company size and headcount growth
• Department size (e.g., sales or accounting team size)
• Industry (this filter is available only in account searches, not in lead searches)
• Fortune rankings (e.g., Fortune 100, 500, 1000)
• Technologies they use (helpful if your product integrates better with certain platforms)
• Recent activities like funding rounds or leadership changes
• Job openings

For example, you can search for Canadian companies with over 500 employees in marketing and advertising that have accounting departments with more than 10 employees. Saving these accounts creates a focused list that you can monitor for news and leadership changes.

Account Insights and Account Maps

Sales Navigator provides detailed insights into saved accounts, including:

• Company growth metrics
• Employee distribution by department
• Hiring trends
• Similar companies worth targeting
• Real-time alerts on company posts and senior leadership changes

The Account Map feature visually organizes contacts within an account into tiers:

• Tier 1: Decision makers
• Tier 2: Champions
• Tier 3: Influencers

This helps sellers understand the organizational landscape and strategically target the right people.

Using Smart Links to Share Content

Available on the Teams plan, Smart Links let you upload content like PDFs or videos and share them via a single link. This organized content hub provides prospects with easy access to resources and gives you detailed analytics on who opened the link, what pages they viewed, and how long they engaged.

This feature is ideal for nurturing leads throughout the sales cycle, providing a centralized place for all decision-making materials, and tracking buyer engagement closely.

Managing Messages and InMails

Sales Navigator has its own inbox for messages and InMails sent through the platform. Note that these messages are separate from LinkedIn’s core messaging system, so conversations can become fragmented if you use both.

To avoid confusion, use Sales Navigator messaging primarily for sales outreach and keep unrelated communications (e.g., recruiting) on the standard LinkedIn platform.

Understanding Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)

The SSI is a score that measures your effectiveness on LinkedIn based on:

• How often you post content
• Your ability to connect and engage with the right people
• How well you build your professional brand
• Your success in finding the right prospects

You can check your SSI by clicking your profile image in Sales Navigator and selecting “Social Selling Index.” It provides insights into how you rank within your industry and network, helping you improve your social selling efforts.

Conclusion

Mastering LinkedIn Sales Navigator can dramatically improve your B2B prospecting and sales success. By using lead and account searches with advanced filters, building and maintaining targeted lists, leveraging alerts for job changes and company news, and utilizing features like Smart Links and the Account Map, you’ll be equipped to find and engage the right prospects efficiently.

Remember, personalization is key — whether through shared experiences, recent job changes, or relevant content themes. Combine Sales Navigator with external tools for contact information and CRM integration to streamline your outreach. Stay consistent, track your Social Selling Index, and watch your sales pipeline grow.

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