30 Ways To Find The Right Prospects With LinkedIn Sales Navigator

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Part 1: Finding the right companies

1. Upload your Book of Business to Sales Navigator

💡 By far the easiest way to get started with Sales Navigator if you already have Accounts under your name in your CRM.

Note: You’ll need Sales Navigator Advanced or Advanced Plus to unlock this feature.

Pro tip: Before uploading your list of Accounts, segment them by Customer, Prospect, Churned. It’ll be easier to search for accounts based on the campaign you’re planning to run. Don’t worry, you can move Accounts from list to list as you convert more prospects to customers.

Instructions:

1. Export your account list in csv format. Make sure to include at least the company name and website URL. Do this separately for Customers accounts, New accounts, Churned accounts.
2. Upload each list to Sales Navigator under “Book of Business” which you can find in the top right corned of your screen of Sales Nav’s home screen.
3. Match the Accounts to LinkedIn’s database by selecting which column includes the Account name and website URL respectively.
4. Wait for LinkedIn to find the Accounts. Note: this can take anywhere from 5 minutes for a list of 1,000 Accounts, but also up to 24 hours if some Accounts in your list cannot be identified. Best to start with a verified list of Accounts.
5. Now you’ll be able to select these Account lists as prospect filters.

Upload list of Net New Accounts

💡 Exact same process as with your Book of Business, but here you need to find and scrape a list of Accounts you found in your territory that you would like to prospect into. This is typical for startups and scaleups who don’t have their TAM uploaded in their CRM yet.

Instructions:

1. Find a list of curated Accounts that match your ICP by searching Google or other databases i.e. “Top Fintech companies in Europe”
2. Scrape the list using tools like Clay and Bardeen. Make sure the list includes at least the Account name and website URL. (I’ll cover how to do this in a future video so subscribe to Viktor from Sales on YouTube)
3. Download the list of Accounts as CSV
4. From here it’s the same process as the first example.

Find companies based on Account properties on LinkedIn

💡 Best approach for beginners just starting out with LinkedIn and for companies selling company-wide products and services. Search functionality is limited but fast to get started with.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Open the Accounts filters on the top center part of the screen
   1. Scroll down and click “see all filters” on the bottom left of the screen
   2. Select the filters that best match your ICP i.e. location, industry, headcount size&growth, department headcount size&growth
   3. Pro tip: you can even use these to prioritise a list of Accounts you’ve uploaded by selecting the list as a separate filter

Prioritise Accounts using intent categories

💡 LinkedIn’s category intent feature lets you see if people within a given Account are searching for a certain technology type within the platform.

Example: My ideal buyers have a sales team selling technical products to the enterprise segment. If people within these companies start searching for tools like e-signature, sales engagement, email automation, that’s a good sign that they might be investing in direct sales.

Find what tooling categories make sense for you to watch out for.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Accounts
   1. Click on the pencil icon next to “category intent”
   2. Choose from 2,000+ product categories (you can select up to 10 so make it count)

Accounts where you have 1st degree connections

💡 Whenever you have people you’re already connected with you can reach out directly and find out if there’s a need that can be solved with your products and services. This by no means guarantee that you’ll get a reply but at least you can DM these people instead of having to fight for space in their inbox or use up InMail credits

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Account filters
   1. Select the accounts list you want to prospect into
   2. Click “connections” and select “1st degree connections”

Companies that are hiring on linkedin

💡 If they’re hiring it means they’re growing (or backfilling a role). Either way they have more projects than people to execute them which is a great signal that your product may benefit them if you can help them work more effectively or efficiently.

Note: this feature is limited because you can’t search by which role they’re hiring for. You’ll have to find out the roles they’re hiring for manually or using other intent tools in combination with LinkedIn who have more granular search capabilities.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Account filters
   1. Select the accounts list you want to prospect into
   2. Click “Job opportunities” and select “Hiring on LinkedIn”

Companies with new leadership

💡 Whenever a company hires new Leadership it usually means change is coming. These people were brought on to execute projects the company does not have the necessary know-how. And with change, there’s often openness to adopt new tooling and services.d

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Account filters
   1. Select the accounts list you want to prospect into
   2. Click “Recent activities” and select “Senior leadership changes in last 3 months”

Companies with fresh funding

💡 Companies who raised funds will invest that amount to grow the business. Either by breaking into new markets or developing their products to stay competitive in an existing market. Most of these funds will go towards growing headcount, but enabling that headcount with tools and services matters just as much so these companies don’t burn runway unnecessarily.

Note: LinkedIn only shows funding events from the past 12 months. If you want to act on this alert I recommend using CrunchBase or alternatives instead.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Account filters
   1. Select the accounts list you want to prospect into
   2. Click “Recent activities” and select “Funding events in past 12 months”

1. +1 if you use Clay: Companies on LinkedIn with specific keywords in description. Let’s say I wanted to target data analytics companies in the US with AI capabilities. That’s niche enough! (AI LLM ML machine learning artificial intelligence large language models)

9. +1 granular search if you use Clay

💡 Clay can also find you accounts on LinkedIn and their search capabilities are much more flexible than what you’ll find on Sales Navigator.

Instructions:

1. Go to Clay.com and create an account
2. Click on the blue “create new” button then “add new”
3. Select “find companies”
4. Add your search criteria

Try out Clay for free using this link and you’ll get 3,000 free credits if/when you purchase a plaid plan after your trial.

Part 2: Everyday prospecting scenarios

1. Persona-fit prospects within your Book of Business

💡 Sales Navigator has a built-in feature to map your Personas. This way you don’t have to set the lead search criteria every single time.

Personally I don’t like this feature because it’s either broad or a hit or miss. Instead I recommend going for boolean searches in the current and past title section to find the right prospects for your campaign.

Boolean searches use AND, OR, NOT logical connectors to include and exclude certain titles.

Example: here’s how I find individual contributors on Sales teams. Current title = (sales OR business OR account OR commercial) NOT (vc OR angel OR HR OR support OR operations OR lead OR head OR director OR vp OR vice OR chief)

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)

2. PUNCs (past user, new company)

💡 Are you tracking job changes to build pipeline? It's one of the warmest ways you can reach out to prospects. Especially if they were past Champions. Here's how you find them

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of business list (target accounts)
   2. Past company = Book of business list (customer accounts)
   3. Connection = 1st degree connections
   4. Changed jobs = (toggle on)

💡 This will show you all the people in your network who used to work at a customer account and now works at a target company in your territory who changed jobs in the past 3 months.

And this is why it's so important to connect with everyone you talk to.

3. Prospects who are active on LinkedIn (limited)

💡 Use this to enrol prospects into separate campaigns. One that has social touches and one that’s email & phone only.

Note: LinkedIn only tells you if someone posted or reposted content on the platform. You won’t know if someone’s logged in.

If you wanna go all-out, best you can do is tell if someone engaged with a post on LinkedIn. For that, manually go to the contact’s LinkedIn profile, then under the “Activity” section click “show all posts” then select the “more” dropdown select, and click “reactions”.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. Posted on LinkedIn = toggle on

4. Target Prospects who are following your company

💡 People who already know about your company or product are more likely to respond.

Use this to reach out to a product-aware audience who need less education to make a purchase. Alternatively you can use it to nearbound into accounts. (More on that later)

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Following your company = toggle on
   3. Pro tip: if your company has a larger follower base, you can segment this list further by 1st and 2nd degree connections to reach out directly or ask for a warm intro.

5. Persona-fit Prospects who viewed your profile recently

💡 “Familiarity with the sender” is just as important for getting replies as your message when reaching out to someone cold. If they’ve viewed your profile you can target these people with a warmer message to increase reply rates.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Viewed your profile recently = toggle on
   3. Pro tip: you can segment this list further by doubling down on a given seniority level or title.

6. Targeting prospects by tenure (joined less than 1 year or 2+ years)

💡 Use this filter if you’re recruiting, looking for insights from people with a fresh outlook on the org, or finding people who might have more authority within the org.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. Years in current company
      1. Less than 1 year for open-minded people
      2. 1-2 years for finding people on the fence about staying at the company (recruiting use case)
      3. 3+ years for finding top performers and/or people with influence within the org.

7. Prospects who you haven’t contacted in 60-90 days

💡 Don’t be the type of Sales Rep who touches one prospect once and then never again.

Chances are people will forget you ever reached out to them after 1-2 months. If you didn’t get a reply the first time around it could’ve been bad timing, wrong use case, or your messages just got lost.

This is a great opportunity to reach out every 3 months or so with a fresh way to get the prospect’s attention. Here’s what you do:

Instructions:

Each week when putting together your prospecting list, create a separate lead list for the prospects you will be reaching out to. This is the only way you’ll know who you’ve already reached out to without having to manually selecting people on LinkedIn.

💡 Yes, you can also check your CRM or Sales Engagement tool if you have one for who you haven’t contacted in the past 60-90 days, but you can’t upload a list of people to Sales Navigator.

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. Lead lists
      1. exclude lead lists who you reached out to in the last 60-90 days

8. Nurture prospects who haven’t accepted your connection request yet

💡 Just because someone didn’t accept your connection request doesn’t mean you don’t want to have a conversation with them down the line. Use this filter to nurture prospects so when the time is right, you’re top of mind. (2nd degree connections + lead list = (specific lead lists from past prospecting groups)

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Connection = 2nd & 3rd degree connections
   3. People you interacted with = viewed profile (OR) messaged

9. Prospects who work in a specific subsidiary (location) of your target accounts

💡 A Field Sales Rep’s best friend. You might be managing an account that’s owned by multiple sales reps but you’re only in charge of contacts in a specific location.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. Geography = (choose the relevant Region or Country or city)

10. Prospects who engaged with a relevant post

💡 Use case: when the topic of your outreach rings a bell, you stand a better chance of your email being opened. Referencing a post the prospect engaged with recently can be a good place to start.

Disclaimer: just because someone engaged with a post does not mean they want to talk to you. Even if it was your post they liked. If you use this approach to prospecting, the very first thing you should do is disqualify everyone who does not fit an ICP and/or Persona of yours. Then you connect something of value to the fact they engaged with the post. If you can’t do that, don’t reach out.

Instructions:

1. Install folk’s social selling chrome extension for LinkedIn
2. Go to your LinkedIn feed where you’ll now see an “export leads” button under posts with engagements
3. Find a post about a relevant topic or from a relevant creator
4. Click “Export leads”
5. Add your email address and click “send leads”
6. Within a few minutes you’ll receive an email with a csv file attached containing everyone’s names, title and LinkedIn profile URL who reacted to the post or left a comment.
7. Word of caution: don’t sequence this list! Your first action after getting the list would be to disqualify anyone who doesn’t fit your personas and only work with the prospects you can reach out to with a message that’s relevant. Because these are prospects. Not leads.

11. Website visitors identified by RB2B

💡 Uncovering website visitors can be a great source of buyer intent. Someone is looking to solve a problem or deliver a project within a company. But while most intent tools only uncover buyer intent on a Company level, RB2B does so on a personal level. Then they push these visitor profiles to a dedicated Slack channel.

Word of caution is the same here as with the previous use case. Don’t pitch. Nurture. There’s a reason these visitors haven’t converted (gotten in touch). I recommend using these signals as a way to prioritise accounts.

Get RB2B here: https://www.rb2b.com/

Instructions:

1. Research the company for signs your product fits a top-level priority
2. Map out your ideal buyers
3. Engage these prospects with a personalised outbound campaign

Source: rb2b.com

12. Users who signed up to relevant events

💡 People attending events of any kind is a good indicator that they’re at least solution-aware. That means you’ll have to do a lot less education and convincing as to why they need a solution like yours.

Note: this only works if you’ve registered to attend an event published on LinkedIn before the date of the event.

Instructions:

1. Go to your LinkedIn search bar and type in keywords about topics your buyers would search for “keyword OR keyword OR keyword”
2. Select “Events” as the content type

1. Click on an event that’s relevant
2. Click “Register”

1. Now you’ll be able to click on the list of attendees

1. Optional: You can filter further by general LinkedIn filters

1. Esport this list using Lemlist, HeyReach, Apollo, or similar Sales Engagement tools that allow bulk export
2. Clean this list by disqualifying anyone who’s not an ICP or Persona-fit contact!

13. Users who engaged with your lead magnets

💡 Generate your own leads by uploading lead magnets to Sales Navigator as a Smart Link. Feature these on your profile, in your connection requests, social media posts, and even follow up emails. That way you can gauge engagement on a prospect level.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Smart Links
3. Upload a lead magnet
4. Add a featured section to your profile
5. Add Smart Link to the featured section

1. When someone visits your profile and views your lead magnet you’ll be notified and you can reach out warm

1. Pro tip: create an inbox filter and tag any notification type from smart links as a lead

Part 3: Nearbounding

1. Do your homework bottom-up

💡 When reaching out to Above The Line (ATL) stakeholders such as VP and CxO they’ll expect that you’ve done your research before messaging them.

So instead of jumping straight to leadership, you’re better off contacting employees on the front lines aka Below The Line (BTL) stakeholders and uncover enough insights you can use to contact leadership.

That way you can lead with a point of view and validate if the initiative aligns with one of their top-level priorities.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current company = Book of Business list (target companies)
      1. Pro tip: it might be better to run this search on a company level instead of a list of companies for a more targeted approach
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. Pro tip: filter for people who’ve been at the account at least 1-2 years. Those prospects will have enough insights on the org structure and initiatives.

💡 Note: BTL people mostly care about getting their job done and nothing else.

Offer something in exchange for their time. Lunch, coffee, introduction, free resource, etc. You have to make it worth their time if you want to get insights.

If the chat goes well, you can even ask if they’re open to making an intro to [leadership]

2. Past employees of target companies

💡 Similar to the previous prospecting scenario, but this time you’re reaching out to past employees. These people might be under NDA but don’t have to fear their jobs in case they reveal information so they might be more open to giving you a hint.

Depending on the product you’re selling you can also go broader with your persona search because other departments might have good insights too.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Past Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
      1. Pro tip: it might be better to run this search on a company level instead of a list of companies for a more targeted approach
   2. Function = Department + Department + Department

3. Community members (and past colleagues) at target accounts

💡 When leaders are looking for new tools, they’ll look to recommendations from their peers first in communities they’re a part of. Those insights alone is worth joining a community.

Another added benefit is that if prospects see you’re part of the same community as they are, you’re much more likely to get a reply when reaching out. As long as your approach isn’t salesy.

This approach is similar to the previous two in the sense that you’re looking for insights, but now you’re looking for members who are part of the same community as you are.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
      1. Alt: Past Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Past colleague = (toggle on)

💡 Note: for this to work you have to add your community to your Experiences section. Most members do.

4. Targeting LinkedIn group members

💡 Same use case as paid communities, but this one could be a hit or miss because I don’t believe most LinkedIn groups are valuable. But because there might be some niches where these work I decided to include this filter.

Note: in my experience Sales Nav will only show you groups you yourself are a member of so it’s worth joining relevant industry groups for this filter to work.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Groups = [group_name]

5. Retarget people you’ve already talked to (or attempted to)

💡 You have better chances of getting replies if the recipient is already familiar with you. That’s where this use case comes into play.

You’ll want to search for people who you already messaged in the past that are somehow connected to the account(s) you’re trying to break into. They might work there now but were employed somewhere else when you first reached out. You might have sequenced them 90 days ago but they didn’t accept your connection request. OR you might have just viewed their profile and they got a notification about it. Whatever it was, when you reach out your name might ring a bell.

Note: this filter will show you leads you viewed in the last 90 days or messaged in the last 2 years on Sales Navigator (with your current license). Messages sent on LinkedIn won’t show up in this filter.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. People you interacted with = Messaged (and/or Viewed profile)
   4. Pro tip: if you send a lot of InMails you can filter this list further by 1st or 2nd & 3rd degree connections for a more tailored approach.

6. Tracking potential champions

💡 Saving the best nearbounding approach for last: 30 Minutes to President’s Club has this genius cold outreach opener that goes "heard the name tossed around?". Here's how you find people on Sales Nav you can use this opener with.

Goal: Find people who used to work at your Customer Companies who now work at a Target Company. These can also be 2nd and 3rd degree contacts.

Now use the opener from 30 Minutes to President's Club:

Hi [name], it's [your_name] from [your_company]. [prospect_past_company] uses us to [use_case]. Heard the name tossed around?

We’re banking on familiarity here so the message works even if the prospects haven’t worked at the customer company at the time when your tool was being used.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Past Company = Book of Business list (customer companies)
   3. Current job title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)

Part 4: Warm outreach

1. Asking for intros from specific people

💡 No need to explain why warm intros work, but you might not be using some of these use cases:

1. asking for Executive intros from Investors of your company
2. asking for intros from a Partner
3. asking for intros from Buyers who book a call with you

Goal with this last one: before you have a call with someone, check this filter to see if they’re connected with anyone at the companies you’re planning on reaching out to. It doesn’t even have to be a persona-fit contact because they can make the intro internally later on.

Note: you can only view connections of your 1st degree connections so you’ll want to connect with Investors, Partners, and Buyers upfront if you want to use this feature.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Connections of = [name_of_contact]

2. Access connections of your team mates with TeamLink

💡 TeamLink allows you to view your team's connections. What makes this stand out is you can see Sales Navigator license holders on your team account who are 1st-degree connections to a lead, even if you are not connected to your teammate.

The previous use case only worked with 1st degree connections.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Sales Navigator home page
2. Click on Lead filters
   1. Current Company = Book of Business list (target companies)
   2. Current job title = (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT (keyword OR keyword OR keyword)
   3. TeamLink connections of = [name_of_contact]

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