This release notes article elaborates on all features and enhancements that are released to at least a portion of our users in LinkedIn Sales Navigator in the time frame of January to March 2023.
Sales Navigator User Updates
Using the Relationship Explorer, sellers can uncover hidden allies and supporters, find warm paths in, and multi-thread to build relationships with multiple buyers, all otherwise hidden and unbeknownst without the feature. Relationship Explorer, available as a new tab on the Account Page, provides prospect suggestions at an account, leveraging insights from the network, interactions, trends, and more of LinkedIn’s professional network to provide sellers with optimal paths to connect with their target Personas at their target accounts.
Following image displays the Relationship Explorer tab on an Account Page:
With Relationship Explorer, you can:
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Discover the right contacts at an account - Relationship Explorer surfaces up to eight of the most relevant leads at an account based on the users chosen target Persona.
There are 12 different insights, referred to as Spotlights similar to those in Search, that will surface on the leads in the Relationship Explorer tab on the Account Page. These Spotlights give you information on why that individual is the right person to reach out to, provide timely reasons to reach out, and can act as a conversation starter.
Important to know
All editions of Sales Navigator will see Spotlights, but not all of the Spotlights are available to all editions.From the Relationship Explorer tab, you can change the target Persona to find more relevant lead results. You can edit the Persona from this view or you can create a new Persona.
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Leverage useful and powerful insights and take immediate action - Relationship Explorer provides timely updates such as recent job changes, recent activity such as posts shared on LinkedIn, and past customers, all of which help you personalize your outreach.
The icon displayed on the lead cards provide you with the recommended action that you can take to get a positive response from the outreach.
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Save time prospecting, cross-selling and upselling, by shortening sales cycles - Relationship Explorer gives reps the unparalleled intelligence of LinkedIn 1st-party data that is people-powered, global, and updated in real-time. It will proactively recommend the best path in based on preferred target buyer personas, so your team finds the right individuals without the search.
Learn more:
To help you identify leads that match your target buyer, you can create Personas in Sales Navigator. By creating and using Personas, you can quickly zero in on the right leads in an account. You can create a Persona in Sales Navigator by function, seniority, job title, and geography to discover insights across leads and accounts that you are interested in.
By using Personas, you can:
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Find the right leads quickly and connect with them
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Improve the efficiency of your sales processes
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Gain information on deeper accounts insights such as Persona growth at a target account
By default, Sales Navigator provides you with two Personas. In addition to these default Personas, you can create three other Personas to make your sales processes more efficient. At any given time, you can have a maximum of five Personas within Sales Navigator.
Important to know
Personas in LinkedIn Sales Navigator are not the same as Personas in LinkedIn Sales Insights.
Following image illustrates the Persona information that is displayed on the Sales Navigator homepage:
Learn more:
Sales Navigator introduces a new data-set called Product Category Buyer Intent that allows you to find leads or buyers who are searching for a product that is similar to your own and allows you to identify which specific product a buyer is interested in.
With this new Product Category Buyer Intent filter available in Search, you can quickly identify potential buyers who are researching your product offering, and if they have indicated interest in your specific company or not. This information helps you find shortcuts to previously hidden warm opportunities.
Use this Product Category Intent filter along with the existing Buyer Intent filters in Search to find leads at companies who are actively showing buyer intent in your company and are interested in your product specifically.
Sales Navigator includes the following new activities that are used to determine Buyer Intent:
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LinkedIn ad engagement: Displays clicks and view activity data. The buyer profile is displayed in Sales Navigator.
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InMail Acceptance for a colleague: Displays the public identity of individuals who have accepted InMail messages from other sellers on your Sales Navigator contract.
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Company LinkedIn page visits: Includes clicks on the company's page. The buyer profile is displayed in Sales Navigator.
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LinkedIn profile visits to colleagues and leadership: This new activity shows sellers when a potential buyer has visited the LinkedIn profile of a colleague on their Sales Navigator contract or the profile of a decision maker at their company. The buyer profile is displayed in Sales Navigator.
Important to know
These activities are made available in Sales Navigator as and when they are ready. So you may not see all of these activities immediately.
Following are the improvements made to the CRM Auto-Save feature in Sales Navigator:
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Editable My CRM account list - Provides Sales Navigator users with a button to remove accounts that are pulled in from CRM, that users don’t want to see in their list. This enables a CRM data cleanup of their most relevant accounts directly on Sales Navigator.
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Customizable user settings - Allow a Sales Navigator user to select the rules that dictate which accounts from their CRM will appear in the My CRM Accounts list. Individual users can indicate how restrictive or lenient they want their list to be, without having control at the contract level.
Following are the enhancements made to the Search functionality in Sales Navigator:
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Filter by account lists in an account search: While searching for an account, you can now filter the search results by any of your account lists. This helps you prioritize your accounts faster.
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New Product Category Buyer Intent: Help you identify potential buyers who are researching your product offering, and if they have indicated interest in your specific company or not. This information helps you find shortcuts to previously hidden warm opportunities.
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New options in the Spotlights filter: Sales Navigator introduces the following new options in the Spotlights filter:
- Past Customer: Filter your search to display leads who worked at a company that was your customer. This data is based on the opportunities in your CRM and is available only with Sales Navigator Advanced Plus editions.
- Past Colleague: Filter your search to display leads that once worked at your current company. This is based on LinkedIn data only.
- Executive TeamLink: Filter your search to display leads who are connected to the executives on your team. This filter is available with Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus editions.
- Viewed your profile: Filter your search results to only show leads that recently viewed your profile.
Following are the enhancements introduced to the Lead pages in Sales Navigator:
- New Skills and Endorsements section: This section from the LinkedIn profile of the individual is also displayed on the Lead page in Sales Navigator. This section will display all skills a lead has listed on their profile along with the associated number of endorsements given by other members on LinkedIn.
- Chronological history of interactions: The Lead page includes a timeline that displays a chronological list of all interactions you've had with a lead. For example, last viewed, messages sent, connections requests, and so on.
Sales Navigator Admin Updates
CRM Custom Ingestion allows Sales Navigator admins to match companies with their CRM accounts while syncing with the CRM.
Following are the enhancements introduced for matching records with your CRM using Sales Navigator:
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You can choose specific fields to use for matching records.
For example, you can choose to use billing address for matching instead of the mailing address.
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You can force match a company. You can select LinkedIn Company ID and LinkedIn Company URL for account matching.
If you choose either one of these fields for matching, it triggers a forced match. A match is created based on only the LinkedIn Company ID or LinkedIn Company URL provided from your CRM, and all other fields are ignored.
Feature Availability
| Feature | Core Users | Advanced Users | Advanced Plus Users |
| CRM Custom Ingestion | √ | ||
| Improved CRM Auto-Save Capabilities | √ | ||
| Product Category Buyer Intent | √ | √ | |
| Additional Buyer Intent Capabilities | √ | √ | |
| Relationship Explorer | √ | √ | √ |
| Personas | √ | √ | √ |
| New Search Enhancements | √ | √ | √ |
| Lead Page Enhancements | √ | √ | √ |
Additional resources
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What’s Changing Deck – A presentation with expanded information on the value of these features for you.
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Sales Navigator Release notes - Learn more about what's changed in previous quarters with LinkedIn Sales Navigator by reviewing a list of release notes, organized by date.