LinkedIn Advanced Search Now Only Available with Sales Navigator [Tutorial]

Have you used LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people and/or companies for lead generation?

With LinkedIn’s recent changes they have removed most of the advanced search functionality. This move is essentially forcing those that are using LinkedIn for lead generation to upgrade to Sales Navigator.

In this article I am going to provide an in-depth look at how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s Advanced Search as part of your lead generation and social selling process.

Many within my community have expressed frustration at having to modify their lead gen process with the recent changes to LinkedIn.

I am happy to report that only slightly modifications will be necessary to your existing process if you use Sales Navigator. Because it is a LinkedIn product, it already looks and functions similar to what you are used to.

There are also additional benefits to using Sales Navigator as this product is built for the purpose of lead generation. You should be able to create an even more efficient and effective process using it, as you become more familiar and fine tune your process.

The biggest downside is the cost. But, depending on what a sale is worth for you, it will be worth the money to help you fill your sales funnel with targeted prospects.

I hope you will find this detailed tutorial helpful, as you adapt your lead generation process to work within LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Finding Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Adding Or Editing Your Sales Preferences

Before we jump in to how to use the advanced searching feature, you may want to update or edit your Sales Preferences, which will affect what Sales Navigator suggests to you as potential leads.

If you weren’t sure what to add while setting up your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, this is also where you can add or change the preferences you initially set up.

The purpose of these preferences as defined by LinkedIn is:

“Sales preferences are criteria you set to let Sales Navigator know what types of leads you want to see based on region, industry, function, and seniority level. You can select multiple preferences and Sales Navigator will use saved preferences to surface lead recommendations based on your interests.”

To edit your preferences, hover over your profile image located in the blue bar in the top right corner and click Settings.

Midway down the page you will see the Sales Preferences section.

Start by adding any locations you want to focus on under Geographies. Start typing the city and click the “+” when the correct option pops up. Click Done to save your edits.

Next you can check any industries that your ideal prospects and clients belong to. Click Done to save your edits.

If you want to target a specific size of company, you can check any of the Company size ranges that apply. Click Done to save your edits.

Finally, you can target certain Functions within a company, by checking any that apply. Click Done to save your edits.

To remove any of your sales preferences, simply click the checkmark beside any of the items you wish to remove.

Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Search

To start searching for leads, log in to Sales Navigator and click Lead Builder in the top blue bar to the right of the search bar.

This will pull up the Advanced Search box.

Top Filters

These are the filters that are most commonly used. The Top Filters include:

• Keywords
• Company
• Function
• Geography
• Industry
• Title
• Relationship
• Company size
• Seniority level

You can start by searching for any relevant Keywords to find your ideal clients as well as referral or strategic partners.

Use Boolean Search functions here to further refine your search.

If you are looking for individuals within a specific company, you can filter by searching through that specific Company only. Boolean search functions work with this filter.

You can also further filter your search by choosing from:

• Current
• Past
• Current or past
• Past not current

You can look for people in one or more specific roles using the Function filter. Simply click the “+” sign beside each role that applies.

You can set your search to specific locations using the Geography filter. Simply begin typing the location(s) you want to add and select the correct choice when it pops up.

You may want to narrow your search by Industry. You can do this by clicking on one or more of the different choices found under the Industry filter.

Often you will be looking for individuals with a specific job title. You can search for these specific positions by searching the Title filter. Type in the title you wish to search for. This is also a Boolean search field.

Again, you can refine your search further by choosing from:

• Current
• Past
• Current or past
• Past not current

The Relationship filter lets you choose whether you want to search in your existing network of your 1^st degree connections and your groups as well as the ability to search specifically for people you are not currently connected with such as your 2^nd and 3^rd degree connections and beyond.

If you focus on companies of a certain size, you can do this in the Company size filter. The filter allows you to look for companies that are:

• 10,000+
• 5001-10,000
• 1001-5000
• 501-1000
• 201-500
• 51-200
• 11-50
• 1-10
• Self-employed

When you are looking for individuals of a certain seniority in a company, you can use the Seniority level filter to focus in on people who fall into these classifications.

Other Advanced Filters

LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides you with 13 additional search filters to help you find your ideal clients quickly and efficiently. These filters include:

• Postal Code/ZIP Code
• Years in current position
• Past Company
• Last name
• Member since
• School
• Years at current company
• Company type
• Profile language
• Groups
• Years of experience
• First Name
• Interested In

The Postal Code/ZIP Code filter lets you choose not only the country you wish to search in but you can add a postal code you wish your search to center from.

The search can then be set to look for individuals within distances of the postal code such as:

• 10 mi (15 km)
• 25 mi (40 km)
• 35 mi (55 km)
• 50 mi (80 km)
• 75 mi (120 km)
• 100 mi (160 km)

The Years in current position filter allows you to select individuals in their current position for a specific length of time. These include:

• Less than 1 year
• 1 to 2 years
• 3 to 5 years
• 6 to 10 years
• More than 10 years

If you are looking for someone with a specific last name you can use the Last name filter.

If you are looking for LinkedIn Premium members, you can search by how long they have been a member with the Member since filter.

If you need to search for your ideal clients by which schools they have studied at, you can use the School filter. Simply type in the name of one or more schools and click them when you see them pop up.

If you are looking for individuals who have been with a company for a certain amount of time, but may have switched positions within the company, you can search by the Years at current company field. You can select from:

• Less than 1 year
• 1 to 2 years
• 3 to 5 years
• 6 to 10 years
• More than 10 years

If you are looking for a particular type of company, such as non-profit or government agency, you will want to search using the Company Type filter.

If you are looking for profiles in a specific language, you can specify this with the Profile language filter.

You can search for your ideal clients specifically within a Group you belong to, in the Groups filter.

You can look for people by how much experience they have in their area of expertise using the Years of experience filter.

If you know the given name of the person you are looking for, type this into the First name filter.

If a LinkedIn member has set what they are interested in, you can search for these individuals using the Interested in filter. These include:

• Potential employees
• Consultants/contractors
• Entrepreneurs
• Hiring managers
• Industry experts
• Deal-making contacts
• Reference check
• Reconnect

Removing Filters

You can remove any filter you have set at anytime, by simply hovering over that filter and clicking the “X”.

Using The Sales Navigator Advanced Search Results

Once you have added all the keywords and filters you wish to use, you will see the number of results that this search will provide, listed beside the Search button located in the top right corner. If you are happy with this number, click search.

This will bring up your search results.

Here you can further refine your search with the same filters as well as specify whether you want to Exclude saved leads or Search within my account.

When you find a potential lead, you have a number of options. As well as choosing to Save as lead right within the search results, you can also:

• Connect
• View profile
• View similar
• Send InMail

Go directly to their profile to check them out or click Save as lead if you think they are a potential lead.

In their profile, you can then add any Notes & Tags to it as part of your lead generation process. This area is found in the top right corner of their profile.

From here, you can decide whether you want to send them an InMail to begin or send them a connection request with a personalized message.

If they are a great match for what you are looking for, you might want to check out what Sales Navigator considers as View similar or Related Leads.

Continue to go through the search results and save any appropriate leads.

Saved Searches

If you find a search that produces great results, you may want to save it. This way you can easily come back to the results and Sales Navigator will email you any new results that it finds that match your search criteria.

To save your search, click Save search located in the left search column above the keywords field.

This will open a box that will allow you to give your search a name and set how often you want to be sent an email alert with new results:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Never

Once you are done, click the green check mark located to the right of the search.

To access your saves searches, simply click the Save search link again located on the search results page and you can see all of your existing saved searches.

To go to a specific search, simply click it.

You can edit a search by clicking the pencil icon beside it or delete it by clicking the trash can icon.

Wrapping Up

While many of these features used to be free within LinkedIn, or at least available with the lower priced LinkedIn Premium memberships, you now need to have LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator to have the ability to do very targeted searched for your ideal clients on LinkedIn.

The bonus of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that it is built with lead generation in mind and they make it easy to develop an efficient lead gen process that will save you time and effort and keep you organized during your prospecting.

Are your using Sales Navigator’s advanced search for lead generation? Has it helped you create an efficient and effective process? Let me know in the comments below.

The post LinkedIn Advanced Search Now Only Available with Sales Navigator [Tutorial] appeared first on Top Dog Social Media.

Contributer : Top Dog Social Media http://ift.tt/2juZbkz