Perry van Beek

Article / Updated 07-25-2022

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers many sales tools to help you interact with leads and build valuable relationships using the LinkedIn platform. Managing your leads can be a cinch if you’re utilizing the Sales Navigator tools. Saving a lead in LinkedIn Sales Navigator There will be times when you won’t have the ability to immediately follow up on leads, so being able to save them to return to later is crucial. Luckily, Sales Navigator provides you ways to save leads every step of the way. The two main ways you can save leads with Sales Navigator are from a company’s LinkedIn page and from a search results page. From a company’s account page To save a lead directly from a company’s business account page, follow these steps: Type the company’s name into the search box at the top of your Sales Navigator home page and select the appropriate company from the drop-down menu that appears.You are taken directly to the company’s account page. From the People tab (the default view), scroll down to the Recommended Leads section.If you’ve already saved leads from the company, Recommended Leads appears after the Saved Leads section. If this is your first saved lead at this particular company, you won’t have a Saved Leads section. Find the name of the person you want to save as a lead and click the Save link at the bottom of that person’s contact card. The Save link changes to “Saved” with a check mark next to it. This person is now saved in your leads list. From a search results page To save a lead from a search results page, follow these steps: On your Sales Navigator home page, hover your mouse pointer over the Advanced link to the right of the search box at the top of the page.Select “Search for leads” from the drop-down menu that appears to open the search criteria box you see below. Enter your search criteria.The more criteria you enter, the fewer — but more targeted — results you get. You can see how your lead pool is affected by selecting different criteria by keeping an eye on the number to the left of the Search button at the top of the search criteria box. Click the Search button that appears in the top right of the search criteria box.A results page like the one below appears. Click the Save as Lead button to the right of any of the search results.The person’s profile is saved and a Message button appears in place of the Save as Lead button. If you accidentally mark someone as a lead and want to deselect that person, hover your mouse pointer over the icon that looks like three dots to the right of the Message button and select Remove Lead from the drop-down menu. Adding tags and notes to your LinkedIn Sales Navigator leads Sales Navigator has two helpful features to keep your leads organized: tags and notes. Tags group leads together in ways that make the most sense for your organization and sales goals. Tags help you streamline your workflow so you can find what you need fast. Notes, on the other hand, is a way to store information about leads, such as the last time you touched base with them or the types of content they respond best to, just like you would on a paper notepad. Adding tags to your leads and accounts is extremely important. After all, the Sales Navigator search function is so robust that you will quickly build up your network (as well as leads and accounts lists). To keep everything organized and easily accessible, you should add tags to be able to locate specific people and companies as quickly as possible. So, what kind of tags should you use? The answer depends on your industry and company. For example, does your company’s industry have some niche areas that you want to keep separate? Why not add tags to identify those particular areas? You can then keep track of leads and accounts that meet that criteria. In addition, chances are your company uses certain terminology to identify prospects. Maybe this terminology is unique to your company, or maybe it’s common terminology. Whatever the case, add these terms as tags to applicable prospects in order to narrow them down in your search results when the time comes. Another method that is helpful is to tag prospects with the roles they play in their companies’ decision-making process. For example, someone might be the final decision maker, an influencer, and so on. That way, you know what kind of content — and contact — is most appropriate when interacting with this lead. You can also tag leads and accounts based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. For example, are they still in the research phase? Tag them as such so you know how to follow up and what kind of content may be of interest to them. Building a rapport with prospects is extremely important. After all, wouldn’t you prefer to make a purchase from someone who took the time to get to know you enough to determine that you have things in common? It’s the same with leads, which is why it’s helpful to add tags that remind you of any commonalities you may have. For example, are you both fans of the New York Yankees? Add that as a tag. How about the fact that you both vacation at Disney World once a year? Tag that lead’s account with that. It’ll give you something to refer back to when the time comes to reach out in the future. Now, here’s where you put the rubber to the road and start adding those tags. You can add tags and notes to your leads in two ways: from a lead’s profile page and from a search results page. Here’s how to do it from a lead’s profile page: Go to the person’s profile page in Sales Navigator and click the +Add Tag link that appears in the right sidebar. If you’ve created tags before, they appear in a drop-down menu with check boxes next to them. If you have not created any tags before, Sales Navigator provides a list of six tags to get you started: Customer, Decision Maker, Follow Up, High Priority, Influencer, and Opportunity. There is also a Create New link at the bottom of the menu to add your own tag. Sales Navigator provides a list of tags to get you started, but I recommend you start adding your own right away. Select all the applicable tags (or create new ones) and click the Apply button at the bottom of the box.The tagging box disappears and you’re back on the lead’s profile page. If you decide you want to edit or delete tags from your existing list, click the +Add Tag link and select the Edit Tag List link at the bottom of the drop-down menu. In the box that appears, you can either edit what the tag says by clicking the pencil icon next to the tag or delete it entirely by clicking the garbage can icon.To add a note to a lead’s page, simply click the Notes tab next to the Tags tab in the right sidebar of a person’s profile page and start typing! To add tags to a lead from the search results page, follow these steps: Perform a search in Sales Navigator.You can search via the main search box at the top of the page or run an advanced search. Once you locate the lead in the search results page, hover your mouse pointer over the icon that looks like three dots and select Tag from the drop-down menu that appears.You’re presented with the same menu you see when adding tags from a person’s profile page. You cannot add a note to a lead via the search results method. You have to be on the lead’s profile page in order to utilize the notes function. Viewing similar and suggested leads in LinkedIn Sales Navigator As a sales professional, you already know your target audience. You know the title or titles you’re looking for in a lead. You know the geographical area. But even seasoned professionals need a fresh set of eyes on things every now and again, right? Luckily for us, Sales Navigator offers users a fresh perspective by applying more of its searching magic in the form of sales preferences, search history, and profile interaction data to offer users suggested leads. There are a couple of ways to access this data from Sales Navigator. The first is in your Filter Your Updates box on the Sales Navigator home page: Go to your Sales Navigator home page. In the Filter Your Updates box on the left side of your Sales Navigator home page, click the Suggested Leads link.This link is the third option down in the “By Type” category. Clicking this takes you to the updates feed of the leads Sales Navigator is recommending you take a closer look at. Scroll through the updates feed and click the Save as Lead button that appears to the right of any update.The box disappears and the Save as Lead button changes to “Lead Saved.” If you decide you don’t want to save the lead after all, just click the Lead Saved button again to deselect the lead. The second way to view similar leads is from the main navigation menu bar at the top of the Sales Navigator home page: From your Sales Navigator home page, hover your mouse pointer over the Discover link in the main navigation menu bar at the top of your screen and select Recommended Leads from the drop-down menu that appears.You are taken to the screen shown below. These results are based on the sales preferences you set as well as your previous account activity. Use the filtering criteria on the left side to narrow down your options.Chances are, not every lead presented is going to be applicable. Save time and frustration by using the numerous criteria presented to include only those leads that are the best fit for your sales goals.

Article / Updated 12-20-2018

Social selling is about making connections with people first. The idea is that over time, you will build up enough of a network of potential sales through your use of social media that an increase in sales is the natural result of these efforts. People want to buy from people they like. And people begin to like other people when they get to know them first. Sales Navigator is a great tool to grow your network, and it has a number of helpful options to facilitate that growth. The “social” part is up to you, though. You have to be social to succeed in social selling, and how else are you going to be social if you don’t engage with the leads you collect in Sales Navigator? In the context of social networking, engaging can mean a few different things. You can use one of the provided buttons to “like” or otherwise show your appreciation for a person’s content, you can share others’ content using one of the network’s methods, or you can take the time to write a comment. There is a time and a place for each of those options. A good rule of thumb is that the more time you spend engaging with a lead by using a social network’s option, the better your chances for catching that lead’s attention. In other words, taking the time to write a thoughtful comment holds more weight than clicking the “thumbs up” button. Interacting with top LinkedIn updates When you first log into Sales Navigator, you are taken to the updates feed on the home page, which, coincidently, is where you have your first opportunity to engage with your leads. The updates feed lists the top updates from your saved leads and accounts. Sales Navigator selects which top updates to show you based on your activity within the platform. For example, if you’ve been performing a lot of account searches within a particular industry, Sales Navigator shows you more updates from those companies, including information such as whether those companies are experiencing high headcount growth in the past year. If there’s a post from a lead in your feed, you can click the “You and ” link at the bottom of that update to see any connections or commonalities between you and that person. When a lead’s update or updates appear in your feed, you’re given the option to “like” the update, comment on it, or both. You should do both and here’s why: Clicking the “like” button on a person’s update is mindless. You technically don’t even have to had read the update to do so. It takes virtually zero effort, though it does show a tiny bit of acknowledgement to the person making the post. When you both “like” the update and leave a comment, you’re still showing that appreciation, but you’re also taking it a step further by taking the time to write a comment pertaining to the update. Just make sure the comment is actually related to the update. Nothing screams “lazy” like someone who simply adds a “thanks!” or a “nice story!” comment to an update. Take the time to add details, such as mentioning why you liked the article or a short personal anecdote related to the topic. People love to know that you’ve actually put time and effort into engaging with their updates. When a person shares more than one update within a 24-hour period, the last two updates appear in the feed. This is helpful for a couple of different reasons. First, you know that the individual is active on LinkedIn, so he or she is more likely to receive any messages you send within a reasonable amount of time. Second, what that person posts may give you insight into what’s important in his or her life and/or career at the moment. The double-update box contains information about how you and that person are connected. If a person hasn’t posted an update on LinkedIn in over 30 days, chances are good he or she just doesn’t sign into the site all that often. I recommend moving your attention elsewhere. Interacting with recent LinkedIn updates The default view for the updates feed is to show the most important updates. You can, however, filter the results to show only the most recent updates by clicking the “Most recent” link in the Filter Your Updates box that appears in the left column of the home page. Once you do that, all the updates you see will be in chronological order with the newest on top. While this a good way to get up to date quickly on the latest updates from your network, you may have to do a lot of scrolling if you’re looking for anything in particular. What’s helpful about sorting your results like this is that the most recent updates are grouped together by account, with any saved leads who work at that company below the company’s updates. This is useful because you have company news front and center. If you decide to reach out to your lead regarding the company update (and you are, right?), you don’t have to search high and low for it. You simply click the “Message” button that appears to the right of the lead’s name and you can contact the lead right then and there. You can, of course, “like” and comment on these updates as well.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

When first getting the hang of using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, most people stick with general database searches and filter the results as they get them. But as you get to know the program more, you’ll learn just how robust Sales Navigator’s search functions are, and how much time you’re actually wasting by not narrowing down your searches as much as possible right off the bat. Luckily, LinkedIn makes this easy to do. Simply by setting a few key preferences, you can automatically filter out certain search results, making it much easier to hone in on the leads that are most likely to pan out. Setting your Sales Navigator preferences is easy. Simply follow these instructions: From your Sales Navigator home page, hover your mouse pointer over your profile picture in the main navigation menu bar at the top of your screen and select Settings from the drop-down menu. You’re taken to the Settings page. Under the Sales Preferences heading, select the appropriate options by clicking your mouse pointer in the empty text box and typing in your preferences. Sales Navigator auto-suggests matches based on what you type. Select your preference(s) from the drop-down menu of suggestions. You can select as many as you want without needing to retype your search term. When you’re finished with that section, click Done at the bottom of that section and move to the next. If you change your mind about a preference you added, just click the check mark that appears next to the option in the list to deselect it. Set your Sales Navigator sales preferences as soon as you can in order to save time with your searches. At the bottom of the Settings page under Sales Preferences are the Email Preferences. Here you can see what Sales Navigator information is available via email and set whether or not you want to receive any. This is important. If you don’t manage your Sales Navigator email correctly, you may get, too many messages — leading to the possibility of important ones getting lost in the shuffle. Or you may not enough messages, which may mean you’re missing out on some great opportunities. The default email address where Sales Navigator will send this information is the one associated with your Sales Navigator account. To change that, you have to change the email address Sales Navigator has on file for you. The image below shows the email options available, which include the following: Account and Lead Updates: Whenever one of your saved leads or accounts does something such as posts an article or makes a job change, you will receive an email notice about it. Saved Search Alerts: If you create and save any personalized searches, whenever something happens that meets the criteria of that search, you will be notified. PointDrive Notifications: If you use PointDrive (a presentation management feature included with Team-level and Enterprise-level plans) to disseminate content to your prospects, you will receive an email when there is activity on that content. Who Viewed My Profile Notifications: When someone views your Sales Navigator or general LinkedIn profile, you will be notified. Seat Accepted Notifications: When a team member accepts a seat on your Sales Navigator team, you will receive an email with those details.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it easy to build up your prospect list. Sales Navigator lets you save leads and accounts. When you save a company as an account, you begin to see the company’s updates in your news feed as well as additional insights from Sales Navigator such as lead recommendations. Being able to keep up to date with the latest news at a company gives you a chance to find a common ground. And when that happens, a cold lead has a much better chance at becoming a warm one. To save a company as an account in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, do the following: Type the name of the company in the search bar at the top of the page and select the company from the drop-down menu that appears. You are taken directly to the company’s business account page. If you’ve already saved a company as an account, you won’t be taken to the company’s page. Instead, you are taken to a page that shows the employees of that company. Click the Save button that appears at the top right of the company’s profile page. The company is now saved to your Accounts list. From now on, whenever you search for this particular company, you will be offered a lot more information to select from in the drop-down menu. To unsave a company, click that same Save button (which now says “Saved” preceded by a check mark). When the company is unsaved, a green notification box appears on the bottom-left side of your screen. When you want to access your saved leads and accounts in the future, simply hover your mouse pointer over the Lists link in the main navigation menu bar at the top of your screen and select one of the two from the drop-down menu. Adding tags and notes to your accounts in LinkedIn Sales Navigator Adding tags to your company accounts serves the same purpose as adding tags to individual leads. Tags help you keep your accounts organized by whatever criteria you choose, making it easier to find what you’re looking for. For example, if in your future sales prospecting you want to quickly identify all companies that specialize in a certain product or service, you’d tag those companies with that descriptor and be able to narrow down search results using that word or words. To add tags to accounts in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, follow these steps: Hover your mouse pointer over the List link at the top of the page and select Saved Accounts from the drop-down menu that appears. You’re taken to the Your Saved Accounts page. Search for a specific company by typing its name in the Keywords box on the left side of the screen. The company you’re looking for will show up on the results page. If there are multiple companies with similar names, you may have to scroll down a bit to locate the exact one. Click the company name to be taken to that company’s account page. On the company’s account page, you see information such as the company description and website as well as any saved leads you may have that are associated with that company. Click the +Add Tag link that appears underneath the company name and description at the top of the page. As with individual tags, if you’ve created tags before, they appear in a drop-down menu with check boxes next to them. If you have not created any tags before, you only see the six tags Sales Navigator provides. There is also a Create New link at the bottom of the menu. Select all applicable tags (or create new ones) and then click the Apply button at the bottom of the box. If you select existing tags and also add new tags to the list, after you click the Apply button, click the +Add Tag link again and this time, click the Create New link at the bottom of the drop-down menu. If you decide you want to edit or delete tags from your existing list, click the +Add Tag link and select the Edit Tag List link at the bottom of the drop-down menu. In the box that appears you can either edit what the tag says by clicking the pencil icon next to the tag or delete it entirely by clicking the garbage can icon. To add a note, simply click the Add Note link on the top right of the company’s account page and start typing the note in the pop-up box that appears. Viewing similar and suggested accounts in LinkedIn Sales Navigator When you first join Sales Navigator, LinkedIn presents you with a number of relevant accounts that you may already be selling to in order to build up your initial list. Sales Navigator determines which accounts to show you based on your recent actions on LinkedIn, such as your profile views, company page views, InMail activity, and more. To add one of the accounts recommended by LinkedIn, do the following: Click the Save Account button that appears below the name of the account you’d like to save. You can add as many of the suggested accounts as you’d like. Click the Continue button. The accounts you selected are now accessible via the Accounts page.Alternatively, you can hover your mouse pointer over the Discover link in the top menu bar and select Suggested Accounts from the drop-down menu. Once you have built up a number of saved accounts, Sales Navigator is able to collect your usage data and start to show you similar companies that may be of interest to you. To see these saved companies, follow these steps: Hover your mouse pointer over the Lists link at the top of the page and select Saved Accounts from the drop-down menu that appears. You’re taken to your Saved Accounts page. Locate a company that fits the criteria of other companies you’re looking for. For example, if you want Sales Navigator to suggest housewares importing companies, locate a company of that type in your Saved Accounts list. Once you locate a company, hover your mouse pointer over the icon that looks like three dots that appears to the right of the company name. A drop-down menu appears. Select the View Similar option. The screen refreshes with a new list of companies that are similar to the one you already have saved. Click the Save as Account button next to the name of any company that fits your criteria. That’s it! You’ve now added even more companies to your list. Once you’re on the View Similar page, if you hover your mouse pointer over the three-dot icon again (next to any of the entries) and select the View Similar option, the page will refresh with even more companies that fit your search criteria.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

Whenever you save a lead or account in LinkedIn Sales Navigator — whether in the mobile app or desktop version — it gets put into a list. Your saved lists are accessible from either version of Sales Navigator, regardless of where you created it. In the mobile version of Sales Navigator, you access your saved lists by tapping the Lists icon (it’s the one with three dots and three lines) that appears in the menu bar on the bottom of your screen. Doing so takes you to a Lists screen. Adding and editing tags and notes in the Sales Navigator app Sales Navigator lets you add tags and notes to your saved leads to help you keep your account organized. Tags put leads into groups that can help you find what you need fast. Notes are ways to store information about leads, such as the last time you touched base with them or the types of content they respond best to. To add tags to a lead in the Sales Navigator app, follow these steps: From the lead’s LinkedIn profile page, tap the “+ Add new tag” link in the center of the screen. If you’ve created tags before, those tags appear on the next screen with check marks next to them. If you have not created any tags before, you only see the six tags Sales Navigator provides: Customer, Decision Maker, Follow Up, High Priority, Influencer, and Opportunity. Select all applicable tags or create new tags by typing the desired word into the empty box at the top and tapping the plus sign ( + ) that appears. If you decide you want to edit or delete tags from your existing list, tap the name of the tag and then tap the circled check mark to uncheck it. If you decide you want to remove other tags as well, you can do it at this time. When you are finished adding tags, tap Save that appears at the top-right of the screen. You are taken back to the lead’s profile page. To add and edit notes on a lead’s profile in the Sales Navigator app, follow these steps: From the lead’s LinkedIn profile page, tap the “+ Add new note” link in the center of the screen. A blank screen appears where you can start typing your note. You have enough space for 512 characters. When you’re finished typing the note, tap the Save Note button that appears at the bottom of the screen. You are taken back to the lead’s profile page, and the note appears under the notes section. To edit a note, tap the note on a lead’s profile page. You are taken to the note’s home page. Tap the pencil icon that appears on the right side of the note to bring up the editing screen. Tap the Save Note button when you are finished editing to return to the lead’s profile page. Sending and checking messages in the Sales Navigator app Another helpful feature of the Sales Navigator mobile app is the capability to send and receive LinkedIn messages directly within the app. While typing lengthy messages on a mobile device isn’t the most convenient method of communication, it’s available in case a lead has a time-sensitive question, for example. To access your LinkedIn messages, tap the Messages icon that appears in the menu bar on the bottom of your screen. When on the Messages screen, you can search for a person or message by typing that person’s name or a keyword into the search box at the top of the screen. You can also filter your messages by Pending, Archived, Sent, and Unread by tapping the icon that looks like three dots and three lines in the top-right portion of the Messages screen. If you want to compose a message, tap the pencil and paper icon that appears above the filter icon in the top right of the screen. You can also send a message directly from the person’s profile. Once you’re on the New Message screen, either search for the person you want to message by typing that person’s name in the search bar at the top (if you didn’t initiate the message from that person’s profile) or just start typing your message in the big empty box on your screen. You’ll notice three small icons at the bottom of the message box: a photo, a camera, and a lightbulb. The first two icons may be familiar to you. They let you attach a picture or take a picture to attach to the message. The third icon may be a little different from what you’ve seen before, however. Tapping the lightbulb icon brings up the current employment information of the person to whom you’re writing. This could be helpful if, for example, you need something to spur your memory about a past conversation you had with the recipient. If you swipe to the left in the New Message screen, you’ll see a box showing the connections you and the recipient have in common. Tapping inside this box expands the list of shared connections. If you swipe left once more, you’ll see any LinkedIn Groups you and the recipient may have in common. Using the information in these boxes is a great way to break the ice with a prospect.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

The search function in the Sales Navigator mobile app is not nearly as robust as it is in the desktop version of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. In fact, it offers fewer sorting and filtering options than even the basic search in the desktop version. We can’t really hold that against LinkedIn, though. There’s only so much functionality an app can have before it becomes a muddled mess. After all, the app is meant to be a supplemental option, not the main way to access Sales Navigator. However, the mobile app does have search capabilities that can be quite helpful on the fly. When you tap the search bar at the top of your mobile home screen, you see a screen that looks like the one below. You can type in a specific person’s or company’s name or a keyword or words to pull up companies and individuals with those words in their names or headlines. For example, if you search for the phrase web hosting, the search returns results of companies with “web hosting” in its name or people who included that phrase in their profiles’ headlines. Using Boolean operators to search LinkedIn Sales Navigator app Boolean operators are two (or more) words used in searches that instruct the app’s search capabilities to take into consideration words entered in a certain way. The most common words used in Boolean searches are “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT.” For example, say you want to search for leads and accounts that contain the words social and selling. Employing keywords when performing searches helps narrow down search results so that you don’t have to go through the results one by one and strip away any that aren’t exactly what you’re looking for. Think of the time and energy you save! Filtering leads in the Sales Navigator app with Sales Spotlights Sales Spotlights is a Sales Navigator feature that uses LinkedIn’s data to select the prospects who are most likely to be receptive to a message from you. Sales Spotlights are only available on search results pages. Clicking within each section highlights the section in blue, indicating that the results you see reflect that specific Sales Spotlight. The mobile app includes the same Sales Spotlight categories you’ll find in the desktop version of Sales Navigator. However, you have a lot less functionality when it comes to the information you’re presented with or the actions you can take directly in the app. In addition to the total search results, Sales Spotlights for leads are broken down into six different categories: Changed jobs in the past 90 days Leads with TeamLink intro Mentioned in the news in the past 30 days Posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days Share experiences with you Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn Total results The first section you see in the list of Sales Spotlights is the search’s Total Results. This filter lists all of your search results that aren’t segmented down into the different Sales Spotlight options. Total Results always shows the highest number of results and is the default view on your search results page. This is what popped up for the phrase social selling. Tapping the plus sign ( + ) next to a person’s name saves that person to your list as a lead. When you add a person to your list like this, the plus sign changes to the word Saved. Tapping the word Saved unsaves the lead. This applies to all Sales Spotlight sections. Changed jobs The first Sales Spotlight section that appears to the right of Total Results is “Changed jobs in the past 90 days,” which displays the number of leads in this search results list that have recently made a career change in the past 90 days. Unlike in the desktop version of Sales Navigator, however, the search results don’t show any specific job change details. If you want to know the person’s previous position, tap his or her entry in this list and scroll down to the Experience section to look at his or her employment dates. Knowing that someone has changed jobs is helpful for a few reasons. First is the fact that this change may have made this person a closer connection to you, whether it’s through your general LinkedIn network or your colleagues and TeamLink. It just may mean a warmer introduction for you. This information also gives you a reason to reach out. It’s common for people on LinkedIn to congratulate others on new positions. While you may not know the lead personally, a job change is a legitimate reason for reaching out. TeamLink leads TeamLink leads are unique in that you have built-in warm introductions to prospects because they are connected to your team members. Tapping a person’s profile blurb brings up the person’s full profile where you can send him or her a message or, if he or she isn’t already a lead, save him or her as a lead. Mentioned in the news Another great way to break the ice with someone is by mentioning something he or she has done that was recently published in the news. This is why Sales Navigator created a spotlight specifically for it! Being mentioned in the news is a perfect reason to reach out to a prospect. After all, who doesn’t like to be written up in the news (for a positive reason, at least) and for your professional network to have seen it? When reaching out to a potential lead, tell the prospect that you saw the piece and add in an anecdote or two related to the subject matter to let him or her know that you paid attention and actually care. Posted on LinkedIn Not everyone who has a LinkedIn profile is active on the social network. People may have forgotten that they signed up or maybe they decided it wasn’t useful for them. Whatever the reason, it’s a waste of time for social-selling professionals to try to connect with people who will never see their messages. That’s where the “Posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days” Sales Spotlight filter comes into play. Now you can see who has logged into their LinkedIn accounts in the last month. This makes it easy for you to decide whether or not you want to take the chance that a prospect won’t see a message you send because he or she is not an active user of LinkedIn. Shared experiences There are several different ways to connect with leads, and the “Share experiences with you” Sales Spotlight filter is the perfect place to start collecting those ideas. After filtering your search results with the “Share experiences with you” Sales Spotlight, tap any one of the profile blurbs to bring up that person’s full profile where you can see your shared experiences underneath the Highlights section. Being able to refer to a group you both belong to, for example, is a helpful way to break the ice. Leads that follow your company The final Sales Spotlight for leads is the “Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn” filter. This filter shows the leads who follow your company page on LinkedIn. That means you and/or your company are on the radar of the leads in these results. How’s that for a foot in the door? But how do you leverage this information? Reach out to these connections. Mention that you see they’re following your company page and ask whether they have any questions about the products or services your company offers. Knowing that the lead is already aware of your company is a great sign and it’s one you should take advantage of! Filtering accounts with Sales Spotlights in the Sales Navigator app Sales Spotlights for accounts are broken down into two different sections: total results and accounts that had senior leadership changes in the last three months. Total results Total Results is the same as the Total Results of a leads search. This filter lists all your search results that aren’t segmented down into the different Sales Spotlight options. This filter always shows the highest number of results and is the default view on your search results page. Senior leadership changes The “Senior leadership changes in the last 3 months” Sales Spotlight lists all of those companies who have had changes in senior leadership within the past 90 days. See below for the search results for the phrase social selling. This could be valuable information for you because maybe you were nurturing a lead for a couple of months and all of a sudden that person is no longer there and your phone calls and email messages are going unanswered. Now you know why. Applying additional filters to LinkedIn Sales Navigator app searches The Sales Spotlights aren’t the only filters available to help you narrow down your search results so that you can hone in on the most promising prospects. On the search results screen underneath the Sales Spotlight filters is the word Filters. Tapping that brings up the screen shown below. While there are considerably fewer filtering options than in the desktop version of Sales Navigator, the mobile app offers the most important and useful filters when looking to narrow down your search results. These filters are: Exclude Saved Leads Search Within Saved Accounts Geography Relationship Industry Company Size Function Title Seniority Level You can add a filter by tapping the “+ Add” links at the bottom of each section. To remove a filter, tap the specific selection you want to remove and then tap the “X” that appears to the left of the filter name.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

To be successful with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you need to see multiple perspectives of social selling. That’s why this list of social-selling leaders will give you some positive social influencers to follow. This list of social influencers is by no means complete. There are so many wonderful, talented, and helpful social-selling professionals out there who can offer additional perspectives and advice on how to succeed with social selling. Melonie Dodaro Melonie Dodaro is the author of The LinkedIn Code and the Chief Executive Officer of Top Dog Social Media. She and her team provide digital sales and marketing training, which includes a heavy emphasis on social selling, to professionals worldwide. Her latest book, LinkedIn Unlocked, is “a social-selling roadmap that will help you generate a consistent flow of quality leads.” Jan Willem Alphenaar Jan Willem Alphenaar is a LinkedIn sales trainer, keynote speaker, and the creator of the PEAS model for social selling on LinkedIn. He’s made over 500 appearances and was a finalist for the best speech in the Netherlands in 2017. Some of the topics Jan Willem speaks about are social selling with LinkedIn and the effect online trends have on the customer experience. Koka Sexton Koka Sexton is the Senior Manager of Content and Editorial at Slack, the business platform that connects teams with the apps, services, and resources they need to collaborate and get things done. Prior to joining Slack, Koka was the founder of Social Selling Labs, which helped businesses and sales professionals “design, implement, and leverage social selling, content marketing, and social media applications like LinkedIn and others to build a sales pipeline.” Neal Schaffer For close to a decade, Neal Schaffer has been a social media consultant and keynote speaker whose presentations include topics such as “The Evolution from Social Media to Social Business,” “Social Selling: How to Leverage Social Media for B2B Sales,” and “Maximizing LinkedIn for Business.” He has spoken at more than 200 events all over the world including the popular Social Media Marketing World and Social Media Success Summit. Mic Adam Mic Adam is a social-selling professional, social media policy maker, and trainer. He helps his clients increase sales by communicating and promoting each organization’s unique value propositions for its products and services. He helps companies determine their return on investment for their social media activities by focusing on closing the gap between social media and business. Richard van der Blom Richard van der Blom is a LinkedIn expert and social-selling trainer. He has over 15 years of experience in various sales roles and has trained more than 10,000 professionals at 400 companies the power of LinkedIn and social selling. He developed the B.E.S.T. Social Selling training system (Brand – Enlarge – Support – Transaction) to teach people how to quickly and easily find new clients using LinkedIn. Alex Kroon Alex Kroon is a valuable member of the team at Social.ONE. He is a LinkedIn expert and social-selling strategist who knows the power of communication and building relationships with prospects to build a rapport. Alex trains sales professionals on how to maximize their resources using LinkedIn for prospecting. Mark Williams Mark Williams is the founder of Winbusinessin, an online social-selling training and support business that provides help to small and medium-sized businesses. If you enjoy podcasts, I highly recommend you sign up for his weekly LinkedIn podcasts to hear valuable tips on using LinkedIn and social selling. Wendy van Gilst After attending the LinkedIn Road Show 2016 in London, Wendy van Gilst realized a lot of people have similar challenges and questions about social selling. So she decided to set up the Social Selling Experts LinkedIn group. This LinkedIn group is an engaged group of people who are passionate about social selling and who are open to sharing experiences and learning from one another. If you are involved in social selling, make sure you join the Social Selling Experts Group on LinkedIn! Gabe Villamizar Last but certainly not least, is Gabe Villamizar. Gabe is the head of B2B marketing at Lucid. He is recognized as a leading social-selling and social media practitioner by LinkedIn, Forbes magazine, Huffington Post, Forrester, and Salesforce. Gabe’s social-selling online courses were recently published on Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning, and have already been watched over 30,000 times.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

Underneath the hood of your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account is a section called Administrator Settings. This is where you do everything from upgrading your plan, cancelling your plan, and updating your payment information to connecting your company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. Here, you discover the most important settings to keep on top of to ensure Sales Navigator runs smoothly for you. Access Sales Navigator administrator settings The Admin Settings page is where all the behind-the-scenes Sales Navigator settings and preferences are set and edited. To access the Admin Settings page, hover your mouse pointer over the Admin link in the main navigation bar at the top of your screen and select Admin Settings from the drop-down menu. Once you’re on the Admin Settings page, you’ll see a menu of options on the left side of the page. Here is the information and settings you can access from this page: Account Type Billing Information CRM Settings InMail and Messaging TeamLink PointDrive Seat Transfer View Sales Navigator account types and billing information The Account Type and Billing Information sections of the Admin Settings page are where you go when you want to learn more about the features offered by your specific Sales Navigator plan (Professional, Team, or Enterprise). Clicking the “Learn about your Sales Navigator features” link underneath Account Type takes you to the page shown below. If you’re thinking about upgrading to a Professional- or Team-level plan, this is also a handy place to visit to see the additional features you’ll have access to by upgrading. The Account Type section is also where you can cancel your subscription. (But why would you want to?) The Billing Information section underneath Account Type is where you can see your billing history and edit or delete your credit card information. It is good practice to take a look at your billing history (at least occasionally) to keep track of when your subscription renews and to keep a running tab on how much you’ve been spending on the service. Connect Sales Navigator to your company’s CRM system Chances are, your company has a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Sales Navigator integrates with some of the more popular systems — Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot — by matching people and company records with lead and account profiles and automatically importing them into the user’s Saved or Suggested Leads pages. This feature is helpful because you and your team don’t have to reinvent the wheel and spend a lot of time either transferring over accounts from your CRM into Sales Navigator or search for leads and accounts individually. Manage access to InMail and messaging Sales Navigator allows you to send a set number of InMails per month (the number depends on your subscription level), so you may want to manage your team’s ability to send InMails. Furthermore, if you want to limit the messaging capabilities of other members on your dashboard, the InMail and Messaging section on the Admin Settings page is the place to do that as well. Limiting messaging is a good idea if, for example, you have new sales professionals on your team who may be in a probational period and you don’t want them to have direct access to leads. On the other side of the coin, limiting messaging capabilities also ensures that disgruntled employees don’t do (or say) anything that might put your company in a bad light. Another setting in this section is the ability to turn on and off a disclosure message that is appended to the bottom of every message sent from your team account that gives the recipient the option to unsubscribe from receiving any more messages from you or other people on your company account. This image shows you an example of this kind of message. The individuals doing the sending cannot see the message at the bottom, but the recipients can. While you can toggle this disclosure setting on and off, leave this setting on, as it shows the recipient that you have no interest in spamming them. Chances are, not every recipient will unsubscribe, but it’s nice to have the option. LinkedIn is serious about keeping the network free from spam — and heavy-handed selling. Enable TeamLink in Sales Navigator The TeamLink feature, available in Team- or Enterprise-level Sales Navigator plans, is full of virtues. To refresh your memory (or give you a brief introduction if you are one of those readers who likes to start at the end of a book and work backward), TeamLink is the ability for people on your Sales Navigator account to see and search each other’s connections. This is a great way to expand your network and lead pool and opens up opportunities for warm leads to boot. In the TeamLink section of the Admin Settings page you can toggle the TeamLink feature on or off. Needless to say, it's recommended you leave this setting on! After all, you’re on Sales Navigator (and LinkedIn in general) to grow your network, so why would you not take advantage of this option? Activate new users in Sales Navigator When you need to add a new user to your Sales Navigator account, it’s easy to do via email from the Seat Management screen. To access Seat Management, click the Admin link in the main navigation bar at the top of your screen and then select Seat Management from the drop-down menu. The Sales Navigator Seat Management dashboard opens. At the top of the dashboard is a quick glance at your team status. Above you see that there are three people on the account; there is one open seat; all three of our seats are Active (meaning, everyone completed the on-boarding process — the series of steps Sales Navigator takes you through we you log in for the first time); and finally, there are no seats awaiting activation. (Below the total seats number is the “Manage seats” link. Clicking that brings up a box where you can purchase more seats.) On the far right of this dashboard status line is a link that, when clicked, lets you assign any available seats using a person’s email address. This is helpful if you have a large number of seats to assign and you want to batch the process. You can add up to 200 email addresses address at a time. To assign an available seat, follow these steps: Navigate to the Seat Management home page by clicking the Admin link in the main navigation bar at the top of your screen and selecting Seat Management from the drop-down menu. Your Seat Management dashboard opens. Click the “Assign seats by email” link that appears on the right side of the screen, underneath the Synch CRM button. A screen appears. Enter the email address of the person you want to invite in the left side of the box and click the “Add all” link. That person’s email address moves to the right side of the box. Do this for all the email addresses you want to add. Click the Assign button when you’re finished adding all the email addresses of the people you want to invite. These people are now added to your Seat Management dashboard. Each invitee’s status is set to “Pending” until he or she completes the on-boarding process. Though you may be the administrator of the account, team members have access to all the same features you do except Seat Management and Usage Reporting. The final section in the Seat Management dashboard is a button to sync your CRM. To the right of each team member’s entry is an Edit link that when clicked opens up the drop-down menu shown below. This is where you control the different permissions the individual is given. For example, you may want members to have access to reporting capabilities but not the administrator settings. In that case, you’d click the Team Member + Reporting radio button to activate it. Be careful to whom you give keys to the kingdom! Make sure whoever has access to the administrative settings of your account is trustworthy. Also next to each team member’s entry is a link to add tags. Tags are handy when you have a large team and you want to group them in ways to assist with searches. For example, if you have a couple of team members who specialize in an obscure industry, you can tag them with the name of that industry so that finding them in future searches is easy. Check activation status and send reminders with LinkedIn Sales Navigator To ensure your team gets up and running on Sales Navigator as soon as possible, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on who has accepted the invitation and completed the on-boarding process and who still has to do so. If you only have a handful of users on your Sales Navigator account, a quick glance at the top of your Seat Management page tells you how many active seats you have and how many are still pending. If you have pending seats, you can locate the individual by clicking the Filter By drop-down menu that appears at the top of the list of members and selecting the Pending option. This brings up all users who have not completed the on-boarding process yet. It’s a good idea to send a message to pending users to remind them of the importance of activating their Sales Navigator accounts. It’s handy to send them a message directly from your LinkedIn account; therefore, they will already be logged into the network, making it easy for them to click over to Sales Navigator and begin the onboarding process. On the other hand, you can remind pending users the “old-fashioned way” by emailing them directly to remind them. Or if you’re really old-fashioned, you can pick up the phone and give them a call. (Do people still do that nowadays?) Remove users from your Sales Navigator account Sometimes it’s necessary to remove team members from your Sales Navigator account. Maybe they left the company, or maybe they’ve just moved on to another position and no longer need access to your Sales Navigator service. It’s easy to remove individual seat holders from your dashboard, just follow these steps: Navigate to the Seat Management home page by clicking the Admin link in the main navigation bar at the top of your screen and selecting Seat Management from the drop-down menu. Your Seat Management dashboard opens. Locate the user you want to remove from the list of active users. The quickest way to find a particular user is by typing the person’s name into the search box that appears in the top-right corner of the users list. Click the Edit link to the right of the user’s name and select Remove from the drop-down menu. Click the Continue button to confirm removal. A message appears confirming the removal of the seat holder. View Sales Navigator usage reports If you have a Sales Navigator Team- or Enterprise-level account, you have access to the activity data of your team in the form of a usage report. Updated daily, the usage report is a great place to get a comprehensive overview of your entire Sales Navigator team account. To access the Usage Reporting page for your team, hover your mouse pointer over the Admin link in the main navigation bar at the top of your screen and select Usage Reports from the drop-down menu. You should take a look at this page regularly to stay abreast of how your team is performing on Sales Navigator. A number of helpful charts show performance indicators such as the team’s average Social Selling Index (SSI) score, the number of searches performed, and the number of InMails sent. To the right of each chart are each team member’s individual scores. Sales Navigator also gives you the option to filter the usage report to isolate data from a specific user, time frame, or tag. To filter, select the appropriate option from the Filter By drop-down menu located directly above the colorful SSI data charts. The image above shows the top part of the usage report, which includes the average team SSI score and a chart plotting your team’s average score over the past 30 days. However, Sales Navigator gives you the option to filter that activity to isolate data from the last seven or 30 days, the last calendar year, or by the existing calendar year. Scrolling down the usage report you see the charts shown below. The top chart plots the number of daily active users on your account — the number of people on your team who have performed at least one action on Sales Navigator every day. The middle and bottom charts illustrate the number of leads and accounts saved, also within a one-month period. Scrolling even farther you see the number of searches performed by a user (on both LinkedIn and Sales Navigator), the number of profiles viewed, and finally, the number of InMail messages sent. Because accounts get only a set number of InMails each month, keeping an eye on the InMails sent chart helps you stay on top of who is sending what and how many. Finally, you see the number of messages sent (non-InMail) as well as the number of unique connections across all users. Sales Navigator counts a unique connection as a first-degree connection, but this number is the aggregate of all connections made, even those made through TeamLink. So why are the usage reports so important? For one, Sales Navigator is a paid subscription. If your team isn’t using it, resources are being wasted. Social selling is all about networking and building connections. If your team isn’t taking advantage of the robust features Sales Navigator offers social-selling professionals, they, and by extension your company, are missing out on so many opportunities to build a large — and quite possibility lucrative — network. Export or print Sales Navigator usage reports Admins can export and print usage reports so that they can use them outside of the Sales Navigator platform. To export (and print) a usage report, perform the following steps: Navigate to the Usage Reporting page by hovering your mouse pointer over the Admin link in the main navigation bar and selecting Usage Reports from the drop-down menu. The Usage Reporting page for your team appears. Filter the data using whatever criteria you choose. Sales Navigator lets you filter by time frame, user, and tag. Click the “Download as CSV” link that appears in the top-right corner of the screen. A message appears letting you know that your report is being generated. Once completed, another message appears at the top of the screen that says, “Your report was generated successfully,” and includes a link to download the report. Click that link and navigate to the location on your computer where you saved the file. (Optional) Double-click the CSV file to open it. To print the file, either click the Ctrl + P keys on your keyboard or click File in the top menu bar and select Print from the drop-down menu.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

PointDrive is a feature of LinkedIn Sales Navigator that is included with some Team-level and Enterprise-level plans. It allows you to create, store, and manage presentations that are then packaged up to be sent to leads. PointDrive presentations can be personalized with your company’s branding and contact information, making it a great option when you want to send prospects more information in a professional-looking manner. Typically, when people send anyone content, that content is sent as attachments to an email message. Most of the time those emails contain long explanations and descriptions about what that content entails. Besides being inconvenient for the recipient, the problem with this method of information delivery is that typically no one person is responsible for purchasing decisions in companies anymore. Often a committee is involved. It’s then up to the original recipient to forward the email and attachments. The accompanying messages may get lost in the shuffle, and things can quickly get confusing. This is what PointDrive sets out to avoid. Instead of having to open a number of attachments in an email message, leads just click the PointDrive link you send them. It really couldn’t be any easier or more straight-forward. Creating presentations with PointDrive How does one go about using PointDrive to create professional-looking content? Follow these steps: From any page in Sales Navigator, navigate to PointDrive by clicking the grid icon in the main navigation menu bar and selecting the PointDrive option. You are taken to your PointDrive home page. Click the New Presentation button that appears in the top-right corner of the screen underneath your profile photo. The screen showing a blank presentation template appears. To add your first piece of content, click the Insert Content button. A new page appears where you can decide on the type of content you want to add. This content module is also called an asset. You can add a file, link, video, or map. Click to select whatever option applies to the content you want to create. If you are uploading a file, you can pull it from your computer or a cloud-storage solution such as OneDrive, Dropbox, or Box. Customize the presentation by adding a title, changing the colors, and/or adding a personalized message that is sent to the lead along with the link to the presentation. You should always add a personalized message to your presentation. It serves as a reminder about who you are and what type of information the recipient is about to view. (Optional) If you want to add more content (assets), click the “+Add New Entry” button underneath the file selection box. Try adding no more than four or five pieces of content at a time to keep the presentation a reasonable length. You don’t want to annoy your lead by sending hundreds of pages of content! Click the Preview button in the top-right corner of the screen. You should always preview your content before sending it out to ensure it looks professional and how you intend it to look. If all looks well, click the Get Link button. The Get Link button is next to the Preview button in the top-right corner of the screen. When clicked, Sales Navigator generates a link to the presentation that can be shared through email or InMail messages. Viewing team members’ PointDrive presentations PointDrive is a shared option, so everyone on your Sales Navigator Team or Enterprise account can use it to create and send content. By default, your own presentations are private; however, you can click the check box that says “Visible in Team Presentations” underneath each presentation’s thumbnail on your PointDrive home page to let other team members access it on the Team Presentations page. For example, there may be times when a team member wants an extra set of eyes on a presentation he or she created. To access a team member’s page, click the Team Presentations link located on the left side of your PointDrive home page underneath the top menu bar. Once clicked, you see a screen like the one below. If you find that your team isn’t making the best use of PointDrive, you can shut off access to it through your Sales Navigator Admin Settings page. With the Team-level Sales Navigator plan, LinkedIn only grants you ten PointDrive presentations per month. If you haven’t used them all by the end of the month, you’ll lose those unused slots on the first of every month. To avoid that, simply set a reminder in your calendar toward the end of the month to save the unused PointDrive presentations. What I recommend you do is click the New Presentation button and then changing the title to “Placeholder.” This automatically saves the presentation and I can then change the title later when I run of of PointDrive slots. Tracking customer interactions with PointDrive Insights When leads click the unique PointDrive link you provide them, they’re taken to your presentation. On the back end, Sales Navigator collects valuable data about when leads view and interact with your presentation that it calls PointDrive Insights. PointDrive Insights give you the following information about the viewers of your presentations: The number of times a lead clicked your PointDrive link The amount of time the lead spent viewing the presentation The time of day the presentation was accessed The location where the lead viewed the presentation based on IP address Whether the person viewed the presentation on a computer or a mobile device The browser type used by the person to view the presentation To view the PointDrive Insights of your presentations at any time, simply click the Insights link that appears in the top menu bar to see a screen like the one shown below. On this page, you can see every time a lead views a presentation, broken down by date. If you click the Stats link that appears to the right of the Activity link (on the left side beneath the top menu bar), you’re taken to a screen similar to the one below. This Stats page gives you a quick look into your PointDrive usage by showing you the number of presentations you’ve created and which content received the most views. It’s important to keep abreast on what presentations are performing the best so you can continue to use that one and maybe review and revise ones that aren’t such high performers. Furthermore, taking a regular look at PointDrive Insights can give you a good idea into who has taken an interest in your product or service. If you see that certain leads watch it straight through multiple times, chances are good they like what they see! Keep track of who views your presentations because you should follow up with them shortly afterward.

Article / Updated 12-18-2018

Sales Spotlights is a LinkedIn feature that uses LinkedIn’s data to pick out the prospects in your search who are most likely to be receptive to your communications. Sales Spotlights are located above your search results and are only available on the search results page. Clicking within each section highlights it, indicating that the results you see reflect that specific Sales Spotlight. The first section in the list is the search’s Total Results. It’s exactly what it sounds like: all your search results, without being segmented down into the specific Sales Spotlights. Total Results always shows the highest number of results and is the default view on your search results page. Keep in mind that the more criteria you enter before the search and the filters you apply after the fact can greatly reduce your total results. The Sales Spotlights that follow Total Results are broken down into these six categories: Changed jobs in past 90 days Leads with TeamLink intro Mentioned in the news in past 30 days Posted on LinkedIn in past 30 days Share experiences with you Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: Changed jobs The Sales Spotlight to the right of Total Results is “Changed jobs in the past 90 days,” which displays the number of leads in this search results list that have recently made a career change in the past 90 days, whether that is changing companies, taking a new position at the same company, retiring, or becoming unemployed. This change is displayed with the words New role in blue underneath the person’s profile blurb. It also lists the lead’s new job, company, and how long the person has been in this new position. Knowing that someone has changed jobs is helpful for a few reasons. First is the fact that this change may have made this lead a closer connection to you, whether it’s through your general LinkedIn network or your colleagues through TeamLink. It just may mean a warmer introduction for you. The second reason this information can be helpful is if you’re already familiar with the company or even the person who previously held that position. It’s a great “in” when reaching out to introduce yourself. The final reason why this is good information to have is because it simply gives you a reason to reach out. It’s common for people on LinkedIn to congratulate others on new positions. While you may not know the lead personally, that is a legitimate reason for reaching out. LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: TeamLink leads The Sales Spotlight section, “Leads with TeamLink intro,” indicate how many search results are connected to you via your own team. These TeamLink leads are unique in that you have built-in warm introductions to prospects because they are already connected to your team members. To call out an available TeamLink connection, Sales Navigator includes a link with the words Intro via TeamLink followed by a number in parenthesis. This number represents the team members who are connected to that individual and able to give you a warm introduction. To see who those team members are, click that link, at which point those team members’ profile blurbs appear underneath the lead entry. The importance of utilizing your TeamLink connections cannot be stressed enough! It opens up your network exponentially and is essentially a foot in the door to leads you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: Mentioned in the news Another great way to break the ice with someone is by mentioning something they’ve done that was published in the news media. This is the purpose of the Sales Spotlight section aptly titled “Mentioned in the news in past 30 days.” These search results will contain some of the biggest names in the industry or industries you’re searching in. For example, in the image below you can see that the search results for the word social resulted in the top two profiles in the list being from some of the most well-recognized (and respected) names in the social media world. This is a perfect reason to reach out to a prospect. After all, who doesn’t like to be written up in the news (for a positive reason, at least) and for your professional network to have seen it? Tell the prospect you saw the piece and add in an anecdote or two related to the subject matter to let that person know that you paid attention and actually care. Do actually read the article and check to see if it’s the correct person. For example, there are 13 John Jones who work at IBM. Did LinkedIn pick up on the correct John Jones? Plus, actually reading the article gives you a greater chance of engaging with that person with actual insights. LinkedIn doesn’t monitor every news outlet in the world, so just because you don’t see a mention in your feed, doesn’t mean the company isn’t making the news! It’s a good idea to supplement this filter with a general search on your favorite search engine LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: Posted on LinkedIn within the past 30 days There’s nothing worse than putting blood, sweat, and tears into social selling on LinkedIn and not get any bites because people just aren’t on their LinkedIn accounts that often. That’s where the “Posted on LinkedIn in past 30 days” Sales Spotlight filter comes into play. Gone are the days of sending out InMails or messages to people who aren’t active on the site only to have them languish, unread, in inboxes everywhere. Not to mention the fact that you may actually be wasting your limited number of monthly InMails and have nothing to show for it. With this filter, now you can see who has logged into his or her LinkedIn account in the past 30 days, making it easy for you to decide whether or not you want to take the chance on a prospect who may not be an active user of the social network. LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: Shared experiences There are different ways to connect with leads, and the Shared Experiences results screen is the perfect place to start collecting those ideas. As you can see below, the “Share experiences with you” Sales Spotlight notes when you have things in common with a lead, such as the LinkedIn Groups you both belong to. Being able to approach a lead with a shared experience makes you seem less like a stranger. Sure, you may start the conversation based on the commonalities Sales Navigator pointed out, but chances are, once you start communicating with the person, there will be more. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Leverage these shared experiences to get your foot in the door. LinkedIn Sales Spotlight: Leads that follow your company page If you took the time to check out the lead’s profile, then obviously that person is on your radar. For Sales Navigator users with a Team-level or Enterprise-level account, the final section in the Sales Spotlight, “Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn,” shows the leads that follow your company page. That means that you and/or your company are on the radar of the leads in these results. How’s that for a foot in the door? How can you leverage this information? If they’re aware of your company, chances are they’re more open to a “cold call” than someone who isn’t aware of it. Knowing that the lead is already aware of your company is a great sign, and it’s one you should take advantage of!