How To Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Account Based Selling

How To Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Account Based Selling

What is account-based selling?

Account-based selling is a strategic sales approach that's targeted and hyper-personalized which focuses on selling to high-valued accounts/companies instead of a single contact (or lead) within a company.

What is account based selling? How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator. By Gabe Villamizar

Why should you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for account-based selling?

With 600M+ members worldwide and 50M+ Companies listed on LinkedIn, it is clear that LinkedIn has the data for both contacts and accounts that you need.

LinkedIn members across the world and decision makers.

Need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator video refresher before getting started?

After reading this step-by-step guide, you'll be able to:

  1. Create a custom account list with your top target accounts/companies.
  2. Create a custom lead list with decision-makers, buyers, and stakeholders.
  3. Set up email notifications & trigger alerts for leads and accounts you care about.
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1. Create a CUSTOM ACCOUNT LIST and save 10 accounts

Why You Should Do This: The LinkedIn Sales Navigator custom account list feature enables you to organize your workflow, keep track of leads, accounts, and take account notes directly within a list. Think of it as a 10,000 ft. bird's eye view for your top accounts.

Once you've identified the top 10 target accounts/companies of utmost importance to you, login to your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account and create a new custom account list. Add your top 10 accounts to that list.

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How to Create a Custom Account List View and Save Accounts

  1. From the LinkedIn Sales Navigator homepage, hover over the "Lists" tab at the very top middle of the page, and click on the "Account Lists" option.
  2. Once you're on your account lists page, towards the upper right-hand corner of the page click on the "+ Create account list".
  3. Give your list a name (E.g. My Top 10 Accounts) and description and click "Create" to create your account list.
  4. Now that your list is created, start adding each of your top 10 companies, one by one, to your newly created custom list. Search for each individual company and select the correct company from the dropdown menu.
  5. After you click and select a company from the dropdown menu, on the right-hand upper corner, click on the blue "Save" button, find your new account list, and save it to that list. (Repeat step 4-5 until you've added all 10 of your accounts to the list)

Additional Features: Custom account lists also allow you to see the total number of saved leads for each account, account geography, account notes (with a copy to CRM option), and senior leadership changes in the last 3 months. And if you want to collaborate and share your lists with team members, you can invite and give them access.

2. Create a CUSTOM LEAD LIST and save 10 leads per account

Why You Should Do This: The LinkedIn Sales Navigator custom lead lists feature enables you to organize your pipeline based on what’s relevant to you, prioritize your lead list based on Sales Navigator spotlights, and take individual lead notes directly within a list.

Now that you have your custom account list created with your top 10 target accounts, your next step is to create a custom lead list and save 10 leads/contacts in each of the 10 accounts. These leads can be made up of decision-makers, buyers, influencers, champions, finance, procurement, and whichever relevant title or persona makes the most sense for you based on what you sell, to whom, and other important factors.

How to create a custom lead list in LinkedIn Sales Navigator - By Gabe Villamizar

How to Create a Custom Lead List View and Save Leads

  1. From the LinkedIn Sales Navigator homepage, find the "Lists" tab located in the header of the page, click it, and then you'll automatically be taken to the "Lead lists" page. From the lead list page, click on the "+ Create leads list" option which is located towards the upper right-hand corner of the page.
  2. Give your list a name (E.g. Leads in My Top 10 Accounts), give your list a description, and click the blue "Create" button. Find your newly created lead list, click on it, and then click the "Search for leads" blue button that's in the middle of that page.
  3. A new pop up window will appear with different lead search filter options. Find the "Custom Lists" box/section, and select your new custom account list from the dropdown menu that you created with your top 10 accounts.
  4. Next, narrow your search results even more by selecting important filters that matter to you located in the "Role & tenure filters" section so you can identify, view, and add the most relevant leads for each account.
  5. Now that you've selected your relevant lead filters click on the "Search" blue button. When the search results appear on the left-hand filter panel, click on the "Company" filter and select one of your target companies from the dropdown menu. As you scroll down and review the leads, begin saving/adding 10 leads per account. Do this by clicking the "Save" button and adding each saved lead to your newly created custom lead list. Do this for each of your top 10 accounts.

Additional Features: Lead lists were made with a collaboration and sharing component in mind, which means that you can share your lead lists with team members in your sales department (SDR, ADR, AE, etc), take private/public notes that sync to CRM, and quickly send connection requests & LinkedIn messages without having to leave the lead list view.

3. Set up alerts & email notifications for leads and accounts

Why You Should Do This: There's a big difference between spending countless hours searching the internet for account/lead insights daily vs. having immediate access to the best (and most relevant to you) insights in a single and readily available platform. My guess is that you'd prefer the latter option, and if you leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator the right way, you can make this happen. LinkedIn's sales insights are second to none.

Now that you've set up your custom account and lead lists, you're ready to setup up insight alerts and email notifications for your account and lead lists, which is one of the most powerful benefits you can get from your LinkedIn Sales Navigator investment.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator - How to set up lead and account alerts

How to Set Up Alerts and Email Notifications For Leads and Accounts

  1. Navigate to your LinkedIn Sales Navigator "Settings" button, located in the dropdown menu that shows up after you click on your profile picture on the right-hand corner of the page. After you click on settings, begin scrolling down until you get to the "Email Preferences" section. From here, you can toggle on/off the types of email insights you want to receive. For starters, I recommend you turn on the following: "Saved Search Alerts, Who Viewed My Profile Notifications, Lead Changed Jobs, and Lead Changed Roles".
  2. Next, to the right of the Sales Navigator search bar, click on "All filters" and select "Lead filters". In the upper-middle area in the lead search filters page, find the "Custom Lists" box and select "Leads" from the dropdown menu. Find your custom lead list, which should contain ~100 saved leads if you did as I advised in previous steps. Once you've selected your custom lead list, click on the blue "Search" button located in the upper right-hand corner of the page. From this page, click the "Save search" button, give your saved search a name, set the alert frequency to daily, and click "Save search".
  3. Navigate to the "Settings" section once again, and right under the email preferences section, you'll find the alert preferences section. Turn on all of the "Activity about saved leads" and "Activity about saved accounts" options by toggling "On" each individual one.
  4. After you've turned on activity alerts for your saved accounts and leads, click on the "Home" button located in the header of the page. From here, you'll be able to see your custom alerts in a newsfeed format that is scrollable.
  5. If you want to display a specific type of alert on your newsfeed, click on the "All Alerts" button/arrow, and you'll see over 10 alerts options (from the dropdown menu) that you can choose from so you can filter, view, and focus on the sales triggers or insights that matter the most for you.

Additional Features: The LinkedIn Sales Navigator alerts you see on the homepage are based on the leads/accounts you've saved so far. If you're not seeing any alerts, save more leads and accounts, and then check back later. In regards to saving searches/leads, LinkedIn members won't be notified when you perform a saving action, so don't trip :)

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That's it, and that's all, peeps. If you found this guide helpful, I'd appreciate it if you shared it with your LinkedIn network.

Gracias!

-GV

Rhett Kasparian

CEO & President | Performance, Executive, Professional, Personal Coach | Career & Life Architect

1y

Good stuff Gabe, thanks for sharing!

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Cody Buchan

I enjoy building community and encouraging people | Husband to my amazing wife | Dad to my amazing kiddos

2y

Sligggghtly late to the game (hey I'm new) but thank you for this, Gabe! This has already been a gift to me. I'm still digging through your posts but let me know if you have an update/newer video on this topic! 🙏🏽

Tunmise Adebayo

Bachelor's degree at University of Ibadan

3y

GREAT work

Hi Gabe - any way to upload a list of companies to sales navigator?? and then add them automatically to an accounts list? (david@purlos.com_

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