By now we all know how incredible LinkedIn can be when used correctly. It is a sales platform with unlimited potential, allowing you to connect with leads, follow industry trends and take your sales strategy to the next level.
In fact, the platform is so powerful that it even offers its own sales tool in the form of Sales Navigator. However, businesses are likely to be wary before parting with their cash for a site that can be used for free.
Why should you splash out for Sales Navigator?
Sales Navigator is a worthwhile investment for any business looking to use LinkedIn as a sales platform. The best way to cultivate sales is to build strong relationships with your prospects. Sales Navigator allows you to find out relevant information, stay up to date with news and connect with your ideal customers.
Ultimately users can utilise LinkedIn for free, whether they have a personal or a business account. However, there are a number of limitations put on free accounts. This includes a cap on how many searches you can perform, the detail you can go into and how many actions you can carry out on your account.
Because of this, some users opt for LinkedIn Premium. This is a paid subscription that allows you to use LinkedIn as you would with a free account but without those limits in place. When looking at how this will benefit your sales, it’s not a great step upwards.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator on the other hand allows you to do so much more than both a free or premium account. At $69.99 per month when paid annually, or $79.99 on a monthly basis, the service can seem expensive, but the benefits pay for themselves.
The benefits of Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator allows you to take your LinkedIn sales strategy so much further than a free or premium account. This is due to its additional features such as more advanced searches and integration with other sales tools. Here are just a few benefits:
1) Advanced and more targeted search
This helps you find the right people, targeting even the smallest of details or the most specific job titles. With Sales Navigator’s advanced search capabilities you won’t have to worry about sorting the wheat from the chaff.
2) Lists to track target companies and prospects
Sales Navigator also allows you to create lists. This tool is particularly useful when it comes to tracking target companies and prospects. By creating a tailored list you can stay up to date with what’s going on in your industry and those of potential prospects.
3) Less noise with a lead focused home feed
What happens when you are only connecting with high-quality prospects? Your feed only contains information from these prospects. This helps to filter out the noise on your home feed, showing you the people and information you really care about.
4) Account maps
Once you are able to narrow down your search criteria, you will be able to map out the decision-makers and focus on the relationships you need to build. This will help you make a more targeted LinkedIn strategy and boost your chances of getting a sale.
5) Find out what is growing and changing
With a tailored home feed, a growing network full of relevant people, and your custom lists, you will be able to keep on top of the companies, industries and topics that are important to your business helping you stay ahead of the competition.
6) Eliminate false-positive search results
The search feature of both the free and premium versions of LinkedIn can be flawed, throwing up irrelevant connections and false-positive results. The detailed search terms of Sales Navigator help to eliminate this risk completely.
7) Filter to find the most active users in your target market
Fed up of finding a LinkedIn account that seems like a perfect prospect, just to find out it’s not been used in months? LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you filter your search results by account activity so you only connect with those who are actually active on the site.
8) Ace your sales pitch
With Sales Navigator’s lists, you can really refine your search terms. This will help you gain the knowledge you need to have a deeper understanding of your prospects in turn allowing you to have an educated conversation and really smash your sales pitch.
Why Sales Navigator isn’t working for you
After investing money in a site that can be used for free, it is obvious that businesses will want increased results from using Sales Navigator. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. However, in almost every incident when someone is unhappy with the performance, the problem is not the tool itself.
Instead, the problem will be their LinkedIn strategy or lack of knowledge of how to use the platform effectively. Unless you are selling a cheap product, the outcome should definitely be worth the investment. If it’s not, you need some help. Be sure to get in touch with the Maverrik team who can provide you with training on everything LinkedIn.
If you’re trying to sell a high-value product on LinkedIn then you need to sell by building relationships, and that’s where Sales Navigator is invaluable. But remember, it relies on how you leverage the platform and how good your LinkedIn sales strategy is. If you need help with this, drop me a message.
