Episode 241: A Deep(er) Dive Into LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator

Bob Woods  00:00

Welcome, Fellow Sales and Marketing Pros, to Making Sales Social Live, coming to you from the Social Sales Link Virtual Studios. I’m Bob Woods of Social Sales Link, sometimes known as the LinkedIn Sherpa. Brynne Tillman, who is always known as the LinkedIn whisperer, normally joins us. But today we have a special guest. Stan Robinson Jr., who is a big part of this Social Sales Link team, Welcome, Stan.

Stan Robinson, Jr  00:25

Thank you, Bob, great to join you. Because of course, I watch you and Brynne all the time. So it’s truly a pleasure to be here.

Bob Woods  00:33

Well, thanks. Appreciate that. 

Intro 00:37

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live, as we share LinkedIn and Social Selling Training Strategies and Tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, every week, Making Sales Social Live! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show.

Bob Woods  00:33

So just let everyone know today’s gonna be a bit like one of those big crossover events like when you see on TV when law and order, Law and Order SVU. And Law and Order organized crime has one of their massive types of crossover things. So I say that because Stan and Brynne host their own podcast, Sales Navigator Insights. 

So while they’re just getting started, they already have 10 great shows that are available to stream via your favorite podcast platform, all about Sales Navigator and using it to ultimately start sales conversations. And that’s where we are crossing over with the Sales Navigator Insights. So how’s the podcast been going so far, Stan?

Stan Robinson, Jr  01:42

So far, so good. It’s always wonderful. And you know this better than I because you’re lots of episodes into your podcast, talking with Brynne is always a blast. 

Bob Woods  01:55

Yes. 

Stan Robinson, Jr  01:56

And the fun thing is that in every episode, we learned something new from each other. Yeah, it is so much fun.

Bob Woods  02:04

Yeah. That happens all the time in our podcast so I’ll toss out something or you know, she’ll think of something or I’ll think of something as like, I’ve never mentioned this before, but let me toss this out and see what you think. And then we build on that. And sometimes it even ends up in our group coaching in our curriculum for, you know, our private people as well as for corporate too. So I mean, it’s always a blast. 

And if you’re either listening to us right now live, or if you’re listening to us on the podcast, we’re definitely gonna hopefully be having a couple of those moments when it taught when it comes to Sales Navigator, because we’re going to be taking just a little bit of a deeper dive in it. And while I know the answer to this following question that I got coming up, I would like to hear your thoughts on just why Sales Navigator, Why should salespeople use it just from an overall standpoint? 

Stan Robinson, Jr  02:57

Yes, great question. And the key about Sales Navigator is it is a tool specifically designed for sales professionals. And the interface is totally different from LinkedIn. So yes, users go to Sales Navigator a lot of times. I look at this as “Oh, my goodness.” But the key is, it’s designed to help you stay focused on sales opportunities. There’s no extraneous information on your homepage at all, no ads. Everything you see on your homepage is driven by leads and accounts that you yourself have saved and then Sales Navigator. 

Sales, navs algorithm does recommend accounts and leads to you as it quote unquote, learns more about you, right and what you’re looking for. So that’s the biggest key is that it’s specifically designed to help you stay focused on sales opportunities, help you find as Sales Navigator says the people who matter to you help you develop some deeper business intelligence about them. Both the individuals and their companies. And then Sales Navigator also, and we’ll talk a little bit more about this, gives you trigger events that can lead to opportunities for conversation and engagement.

Bob Woods  04:31

Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of engagement, Craig has already chimed in a little bit with something that I actually hadn’t planned on covering but it’s a very important part. It’s a very important part of Sales Navigator and that’s messaging so you can do more with messaging in Sales Navigator than you can with just regular LinkedIn or even LinkedIn, LinkedIn premium without Sales Navigator so so keep in mind In that there is a LinkedIn premium level that you can get that gives you some more stuff. 

But it doesn’t have a Sales Navigator. Whenever you get Sales Navigator you get LinkedIn premium included with that, but you don’t get LinkedIn premium and Sales Navigator unless you pay extra for so I did just want to make that kind of distinction there. But let’s just talk real quick about messaging. And what are some of the extra things that you get with messaging in Sales Navigator that you don’t get in regular LinkedIn or even just standalone LinkedIn Premium?  

Stan Robinson, Jr  05:36

Yes, And thanks, Craig. And I’m assuming that Craig’s primarily talking about InMails, which gives you the opportunity to message anyone on LinkedIn. And now LinkedIn has crossed a billion users relatively recently. And I forget, I think it’s 60 million plus companies.

Bob Woods  06:07

Something like that. It’s just astronomical. 

Stan Robinson, Jr  06:09

So yes, so with InMails, you do not have to be connected to the individual as a first-degree connection, like you do on LinkedIn to be able to send them a direct message. And so without diving too deep down the rabbit hole, because you get a certain number of InMail credits to start with. And the good news within males is, as you send them, if people respond to them, even if they say I’m not interested, if they respond, you get that InMail credit back again. So you’ve got a certain allotment of InMails, but as people respond to them, it refills your allotment. So thank you, Craig.

Bob Woods  06:55

Yeah, Great. And just real quick before we move on, I like that feature that you get the credit back, because a lot of times when you send this stuff, you send it into the ether, and you have no idea whether or not it’s it’s effective when you start getting credits back, especially if you’re sending like the same type of message. And and, and let’s say you might have a campaign going on or something like that, you know, that the message is resonating. I don’t want to call it an A B test. But it’s kind of testing and that you are getting results back is like, “Oh, this is working. I should continue to do that,” rather than just not knowing anything about what you’re doing there.

Stan Robinson, Jr  07:39

Yes. And as you can see, Brynne has joined us as well?

Bob Woods  07:44

Yeah, Brynne. So yeah, we had mentioned before about AI opportunities that we didn’t think that we were going to be able to talk about but she has listed three, where we’re going to hold off on the details of these until later. podcast episodes, not only on Making Sales Social Live, but on Sales Navigator insights, but we are going to be getting some AI here. So account AI to help us with pre call planning and buyer insights. I think that is huge. 

We’re also going to be talking about, we’re also going to be getting buyer mapping with organizational charts, as well as conversational search. So we’re just going to kind of leave those out there and use the standard tune into later episodes to find out much, much more about that. So yeah, absolutely. And Brynne says that she is engaging from the taxi. So she is definitely he is. She is always always hooked into everything. 

And anything that is LinkedIn just like Stan and I are. And we have a little bit of proof of that too. So we have that. Let’s go into searches really quick, especially because we just talked a little bit about conversational searches. But let’s just take it from a little bit of a higher level and just talk about the power of searches on Sales Navigator versus for your premium LinkedIn.

Stan Robinson, Jr  09:10

Yes, exactly one of the biggest pluses of Sales Navigator are the additional search filters that you get. So with LinkedIn premium, you do get the ability to see everyone that’s viewed your profile for the past 90 days, which you don’t get with the free version of LinkedIn, you only get the past five days. But you don’t get any additional search filters with LinkedIn premium and Sales Navigator you do. So you have additional account search filters. 

The ability to drill down based on a number of different things, what type of company it is, whether it’s private, public, etc. In terms of in-addition to headcount also revenue you can even search accounts by department revenue and changes in department headcount. So for example, if you serve a particular I don’t know, let’s say you carry a product around finance. And you see in one of your target companies that the headcount in the finance departments is increasing.

Well, that may be a signal for you to talk to them about their products, they may need some more seats or whatever the case may be. On the lead side, there are additional search filters, around leads as well. So Sales Navigator officially says about their about 40 Plus filters. Last time I counted, it was closer to 54 Total filters between accounts and leads in sales nav. 

Bob Woods  10:55

Nice. I had no idea that the number was that big. But that’s but that’s pretty incredible. So Stan, you just talked a little bit about a trigger there. And in episode five of Sales Navigator, Navigator insights, again, available on your favorite podcast platform provider, you discussed seven different ways to leverage triggers. So you kind of went over what a trigger is. But let’s just talk a little bit more about that. And then and then maybe give just like one or two more examples of that.

Stan Robinson, Jr  11:27

Yes. So we mentioned that triggers are events that are potential opportunities for you to start a conversation with your audience. Now, trigger is what Sales Navigator actually calls alerts. So on your homepage, on Sales Navigator, you will see areas for account alerts, and lead alerts. And alerts just in terms of accounts can range from growth, or what they call risk, which risks is another way of saying headcount decreases, as well as news events, if an account appears in the news, hopefully, in a positive light, that’s an opportunity for you to start a conversation. 

And the power of these alerts is that they are opportunities for you to engage, that you may not have otherwise seen, because we’re all bombarded with so much information. And we’re trying to keep up with everything going on. And even if you’re using Google Alerts around your target accounts, it’s not enough to keep up with everything that’s going on. Particularly with the leads that you’re following. 

Yeah, because for example, you can also get alerts when leads have posted on LinkedIn, when they have been mentioned in the news. So they’re our Sales Navigator just makes our lives so much easier in terms of showing us information around the accounts and people that were specifically interested in, which we can then use as opportunities to start conversations. 

Bob Woods  13:29

Yep. So then Brynne says that she loves alerts and a comment that she made although she’s not here, she’s here. That’s great. I love it. So as she said, then of course, this is absolutely true. Finding your ideal prospects is half the battle. The second is getting to Hello, which triggers are a great way to get to Hello, she also cites using the second degree of filler to see who can help us get an intro that is another great way to get to have low so and and with all of the additional filters that are in there you can do things much easier in Sales Navigator then you can do with with with either of the LinkedIn levels suns Sales Navigator.

Let’s just go ahead and put it like that. So and before we go on, I just want to point out that neither Stan or myself get a dime from anyone who signs up and start paying for Sales Navigator I do want to be clear about that because we talk a lot about Sales Navigator so much some people probably going “Oh my god, they must be making a min off Sales Navigator” we don’t make a dream off of when people sign up for Sales Navigator. We just think that tool is so powerful that we talk about it a lot. Hence the separate podcast just on Sales Navigator and of course we offer formal training on it too. So always keep that in mind as well. 

So, we had alluded to this a little. But before, if you’ve used Sales Navigator in the past, but haven’t seen it lately, let’s just say it’s changed a lot and is even better than it has been. We’ve already discussed some of the AI improvements that are coming out on it. One new feature that we can delve into a little bit more deeper though, is relationship explorer. Let’s get into that a little bit and talk about how we as salespeople can use it.

Stan Robinson, Jr  15:23

Yes, so relationship Explorer is a tool that you’ll see when you jump in. When you jump into an account on Sales Nav, Sales Navigator is trying to give you as much business intelligence that will be relevant for you in terms of helping you to be more effective in your relationship with the account and more specifically to people in the account. And so relationship explorer is a way that you can kind of easily see the actors within the accounts.

Bob Woods  15:59

I like the actors. Yeah, because they are acting on Yeah, no, that’s great. I love it.

Stan Robinson, Jr  16:05

So when you first jump into relationship Explorer, you have the opportunity. I don’t know, we haven’t talked about this. Up to this point, though I mentioned it briefly. You can filter the people that you see in relationship explorer, by either all employees, or what you should also do when you first get started on Sales Navigator, or even if you haven’t done it up till now, you can always do it now. It starts setting up personas.

Bob Woods  16:37

Yes.

Stan Robinson, Jr  16:38

Yeah, that’s relatively new. There, there are only four filters that you use for personas. But it’s a way to start filtering down your target market. And you can use it for filtering within relationship Explorer. You can use personas to filter your searches for people as well. And personas. Let’s see, we’ve got geography as one of the filters. Seniority is one of the filters. Title is one of the filters. And I actually have to look as far as the last one. Because I always have to stop and think about functions. Right? 

And so one of the powerful aspects of personas, and you can have up to five personas, because particularly in large organizations, there are a fair number of decision makers, because the number of decision makers involved in complex sells, keeps going up on average, in terms of the buying committee. But within a larger organization. Especially, you have different groups of people that are involved in the decision making process. 

And so as Bob mentioned, within relationship Explorer, you can use personas to kind of filter down the people that come back to you. And underneath that you also have what’s called a relationship map. Which Sales Navigators, we’re going to continue to refine, but right now, it’s a way for you to start to set up your own version of an org chart. So you can see how people within an organization are related to each other. 

Bob Woods  18:35

Yeah. that’s Yeah, that’s really cool, though, because you could see who touches what, at which part, because you’re building that org chart for yourself, rather than just seeing an org chart that’s just, you know, somewhere online or whatever, you can actually customize that within Sales Navigator. And then you can potentially, you know, depending on what you’re doing in terms of your own outreach efforts and things like that, you can actually make direct contact from those from the entries in that chart as well, which I think is just really cool. 

And then and then Brynne says she also loves using personas on companies and account pages, which is absolutely true and absolutely great. So we do have a question that just came to someone, Luciana, I hope I pronounced that right. I own a language school in Brazil. Most of our clients are B2B in the oil and gas industry with Sales Navigator work for us. Most of our clients are in Brazil, LinkedIn is worldwide. I mean, LinkedIn is it and LinkedIn is most definitely not America only. I mean, there are. 

I remember and this was a little while ago, and I’m sure it’s still the same no American accounts versus worldwide accounts. I mean, America was an era or the United States I should say specifically. It wasn’t even 50% there. I mean, there is quite a spread of users from around the world who use sales net or who use LinkedIn in general, which is what Sales Navigator tabs into. And in fact, one thing, In fact that I remember, when LinkedIn, when Microsoft first bought LinkedIn, one of the things that they said is that, prior to them buying it, they considered LinkedIn, a top resource for accurate information about people who are in companies. 

And that’s part of why Microsoft paid that 30, whatever billion I mean, just a huge number to buy LinkedIn is because of the database that was there. So always keep that in mind that, and this is especially true for Sales Navigator, because you’re depending on updated information in there, that the information is more than likely good in there. And some of these other databases that you can buy company data from, probably aren’t as good in my opinion, as LinkedIn and which Sales Navigator can access. 

Stan Robinson, Jr  21:17

Yeah, exactly. And I just did a real quick search for leads in Brazil, in oil and gas. And I think the other one was oil, gas and mining that I put in 310,000 results.

Bob Woods  21:30

And also keep in mind that’s from Stan’s list. So someone who is in Brazil, who has connections in Brazil is probably going to be even higher, because Stan, I’m gonna, I’m gonna kind of assume that you probably don’t have a lot of connections in Brazil.

Stan Robinson, Jr  21:48

Definitely are correct in that. And when I took off oil and gas and just did Brazil, I saw 18 million results.

Bob Woods  21:59

So yeah, yeah. So let’s see, Luciana, I think you’re pretty safe to assume that you’re going to find people in there. So that’s good. So one last area that I want to go over really quickly is smart legs, one of my favorite features of Sales Navigator. So we’re going to go through it really quickly and explain why it’s so powerful. 

There is one caveat to it, though. And that Sales Navigator has three tiers, it has an individual tier, and then like a team’s tier, and an enterprise tier. Unfortunately, smart links are not available in the individual tier, you have to go through the second tier or the third tier for it. So with that out of the way, let’s get into smart links and why they’re so powerful.

Stan Robinson, Jr  22:47

Yep, yep. So smart links, as Bob mentioned, not available to core keeps, keeps changing the names of the tiers, but I know. 

Bob Woods  22:57

Yep. I know.

Stan Robinson, Jr  22:47

But at least as of today, I think they’re called advanced and advanced plus tears, and smart links are simply a way that you can share multiple pieces of content by sending just one link to a person. And you don’t have to worry about oversize files, it helps with firewalls, and there’s so many different uses for it. Now, one thing is being able to send the information. The other beautiful thing, from a sales standpoint, is that you get tracking on engagement. 

So whenever anyone opens the Smart Link, and they start looking at the content you send, you get notified. And you can see how long they spend on each piece of content. So if you send a proposal to accompany and they wind up passing it around internally, you can see who has engaged with that proposal. And of course, that’s an opportunity for you to follow up. A brand new who’s on the call. She’d sent a proposal to someone it was at least three years before and probably longer. 

Yeah, and nothing ever happened with it. But then she recently got an email notification that someone popped the proposal open and looked at it. Now this person did not contact her. All they did was look at the proposal she’d sent us earlier. But by virtue of the fact that she got notified about it, she was able to contact them and it turned into business. So of course the same thing applies to you.

Bob Woods  24:56

Yep, that’s amazing. It’s amazing. So with that, and also keep in mind and this is something that Brynne popped in earlier, individuals can buy the advance. It just costs more. But individuals can do that. It’s like Brynne said though, and this is an old quote of hers, she used to and I’m probably going to mangle it but she would, I’m trying to remember now I add it had to do with the Sales Navigator. What she paid for Sales Navigator now covers her mortgage before she would kind of juggle, you know, which is first Sales Navigator or mortgage. 

And obviously, this is hyperbole to a certain extent. But I mean, it can generate real money for you is the bottom line because it is so powerful. So with that, again, Stan and Brynne podcast is called Sales Navigator insight, we have just scratched the surface, they get into much, much deeper things when it comes to Sales Navigator than we did today. The episodes have been great so far, and only promises to be better going forward. So thank you so much, Stan, for standing up and stopping by. We definitely appreciate it. 

Stan Robinson, Jr  26:23

Thank you for having me, Bob. And if anyone has other questions, just feel free to ping us directly. I’m happy to help. Bob thanks so much. This has been awesome. 

Bob Woods  26:33

Thank you. I definitely appreciate it. And I want to thank you for joining us on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or x formerly known as Twitter right now, we do this every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. 

If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access all of our previous shows and to be alerted when new ones drop and you know, feel free to do that with Sales Navigator insights too. 

If you’d like more information on our podcast is socialsaleslink.com/podcast We do those two shows weekly here this one and our making sales social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas. So when you are out and about, be sure to make your sales social and have a great day everybody. Bye bye. 

Outro  27:25

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