Episode 4: 11 Sales Navigator Filters That Will Rock Your World

Intro  00:00

Welcome to the Sales Navigator live show with Stan and Brynne. Join LinkedIn expert and sales professional Brynne Tillman, and me, Stan Robinson, Jr, Chief coaching Officer here at Social Sales Link, as we bring you the best tips and strategies for leveraging Sales Navigator for your sales success. Enjoy the show! 

Stan Robinson, Jr.  00:32

Hello, everyone!

Brynne Tillman  00:37

Hi, Stan, how are you doing today?

Stan Robinson, Jr.  00:44

Excellent. Excellent. How about yourself, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:48

Oh, as if you're watching this live, you'll notice I might be on vacation, but I will not miss this for the beach. So excited to be here.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  01:00

Thank you much appreciated, and Happy Fourth of July in advance to all those who celebrate. And so we just look forward to spending some time with you briefly today before we jump totally into holiday mode. And we're going to be talking about 11. Kind of hard to figure out how to do that with, but 11 Sales Navigator filters.

Brynne Tillman  01:23

You do 10? And I'll do one.Go ahead.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  01:25

Oh, there we go. There we go. 11. Okay, I'll remember that for the future. I can get up to 20 fingers here. So, yes, we're going to be talking about some Sales Navigator filters, as we said that will rock your world. There are a lot of filters, some of them you're probably using all the time, like geography and so forth and so on. But there are few that I wanted to dive into in a little bit more depth, because we may not use them all the time. And we have a couple of relatively new features for you as well. Well, so Brynne, Is it okay, if we start with account filters, and then we'll go over to lead filters.

Brynne Tillman  02:10

Absolutely.I’m great with that.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  02:14

So we all know that you can search based on company revenue and company headcount. But what's easy to miss is that you can also search and filter by department headcount growth. Now when we say growth, that means both growth. If it's growing, the department is growing. But you can also search for departments that may be shrinking in headcount. Not a very positive thing, but it may be an opportunity to help them. So if you know that a department is shrinking depending on your solution, and Brynne it sounds like a thought hit your mind.

Brynne Tillman  03:06

Oh, yeah. But let's talk about growth. So why would you care about growth? Depending on what it is you do? What if you're a commercial realtor, they're growing, they may need more office space? What if you're a commercial furniture dealer? Obviously, they may need new desks, right? So I want you to really think about if your prospects need you if they're growing, right, there are lots of opportunities in there. 

Now, you may say, Well, why would I want to work with someone who's shrinking? Who's laying off? Well, you know, you may have some services that could now fill a gap. That is, now that they've done some layoffs. And a lot of times companies will do that. They'll lay off entire marketing teams and then hire a marketing company to supplement. So take a look at your business and say, “Is this a filter that would help me identify a more qualified opportunity?”

Stan Robinson, Jr.  04:11

Yep, exactly. Exactly. And some of you on the call may be offering fractionalized services, because I've heard of everything from fractionalized CFO services where someone who has that background will literally come in and fill in part time, and most recently heard of fractionalized CEO which I'd never heard of before. But as Brynne said, if you have a service that can fill a gap, it may be an opportunity. 

I just realized we're gonna have to go through it. It's 11. So we're gonna need to go through these relatively quickly. Yeah, my goodness. technologies used I know we may have mentioned this on another call, but technology used He's kind of buried at the bottom of the filters, under Accounts. And if you offer, say, complementary technologies to, you can type in Salesforce as an example, you can type in it, Oracle, SAP and other smaller software, other types of technologies. 

If you offer complementary technologies that may surface some opportunities for you that you never would have been aware of. So little use filters, but it's there. We're trying to get them to give us an actual list of all the technologies that they have in the drop down. So we don't have to guess. We'll see. But that's a filter that we just want to make sure everyone knows about.

Brynne Tillman  05:55

Yeah, that's great. I love that filter. If you're in the SAS world, there are so many other ways, though. I mean, we don't know them all. We don't know exactly what it is that you do. But there are so many other ways that you could probably leverage this technology used, right? Even if, let's say, for example, you're a sales trainer. If they have salesforce.com. That means that they're investing in the sale of the way that their team sells. So maybe you can complement that, right. There's just so much in “technologies used” I know we're going to speed this up but as we're going through these, I really want you to sit back and say, Is this a trigger? That almost pre qualifies them as an opportunity?

Stan Robinson, Jr.  06:47

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep. So next one, I'm coming up on a couple that are potential gold mines, even though these are really good. Senior Leadership changes within the past three months. Many times as senior leadership change, depending on who it is, may indicate a change in direction, a new set of initiatives that are coming. So as always, Sales Navigator is trying to position you to start conversations around relevant events that may turn into sales opportunities, if not immediately down the road. So senior leadership changes is one other filter that you can use, and potential opportunities to start conversations. Bryynne, any thoughts on that one? Yeah, so

Brynne Tillman  07:45

I think I just had a brain block. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Repeat your last line. I had an idea that left.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  07:55

Yeah, I was probably talking at the time. So we've seen your leadership changes within the past three, yes.

Brynne Tillman  08:06

Okay. So this is my thought, there's a new person in this role probably brought in to make a change, probably brought in because something isn't working or it maybe they had turnover, right, that the person that had the job before just wasn't wasn't a fit, there's probably things broken. And so folks that are new in a job are much more open to hearing new opportunities and new ways to do things. So the opportunity here to get a first conversation is significantly higher than if you had someone that simply was there for years and years and years and is just comfortable and happy with the way things are going.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  08:57

Exactly, exactly. So complacency will not be something you need to worry about with someone who's new. Yeah, yep and a lot of times one of our biggest competitors is the status quo and as Brynne said, when someone's new, they're there to make changes, the status quo is not a given. So if you have alternatives, it's a tremendous opportunity. So the next one we're going to talk about is companies that announced that they have more money to spend.

There's a filter for funding events in the past 12 months. Now, it's not always going to be the case that it's funding for what you have to offer but if a company does get funding, if they have more money, it's worth at least looking into what it's earmarked for or even beyond that, if it's not earmarked for you, you may still be able to make a case that they should invest some of it with you.

Brynne Tillman  10:09

Yeah, so some of this is so interesting. And if you do some social listening and deep dive, you may find out what the funding was raised for, is it for technology and programmers, is it to grow a sales team, I mean, sometimes in a press release or something like that, you may actually be able to find that information. The other thing that you can do is start to look at your Pathways in Sales Navigator. So now we've identified ABC got X, funding for X y&z And you're like, Man, this is someone that this is a company that I could really bring value to. So great, we've decided that and now I want you to go in and look at your social proximity to them. Do I know anyone that works at that company? Do I know anyone that knows someone that works at that company?

Now for this first step, I highly recommend that you actually go pretty low and unimportant in the company, if you can. Don't go too high until you have enough information insights to share where you're coming across, educated, we have to get educated. And not everything is going to be in that press release or on that website or in that Google search. So start to have conversations with folks, this is public information, they should feel pretty proud that they got this funding and willing to talk about it a little bit. And you can even kind of say, you know, here are the three or four people inside of your company that I'm going to be reaching out to. Do you have any insights for me? Do you know any of them well enough to make an introduction? So grabbing that filter, that they've had this funding event, doing some deep dive and then leveraging your social proximity to start a conversation is the trifecta.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  12:15

Love it. Love it, the trifecta! Good. Well, let's see, to wrap up, the account filters we're going to be talking about. One may sound fairly mundane, but I'll bet a lot of people may not be doing this. And it's just the ability to filter based on the account list that you've already set up. And you can include or exclude all the accounts on the list that you set up. So why? Well, it's a good idea to have an account list of your competitors. Why? So you can filter them out of your searches. Why spend any time doing that? And lists of your prospects as well. If for example, you're tasked with going after new logos. Okay. prospects, competitors and your current clients, because there may be occasions when you want to exclude your current clients, when you're looking for new logos, as an example. 

Brynne Tillman  13:25

The other thing is, if you're doing a search, and you know that some of your colleagues are in accounts that just keep coming up, can just exclude that account. Or you can have, you know, Jane's accounts, and then, you know, oh, Jane has this account or this account, or maybe in house accounts. And anytime you come up against a company that you know, that's already an in house account, you can then exclude all of those in one shot. So I love that.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  14:00

Exactly. All right, and Brynne we're going to do a quick pivot to lead filters. So we talked about several account filters that you can use. Now we're going to talk about some lead filters. And no one is used to filtering based on geography but Sales Navigator also gives you the ability to filter by what they call postal code, which here is in the US zip code. And you can do a radius around a certain zip code. Now Brynne, you can let me know if you have other ideas. What occurs to me is that good use cases for this are things that you're doing in person. As an example, if you're visiting a city, you're taking a flight, you've got one appointment there. You still have some time on your hands to see if you can get to some other people that are close by. You don't have time to take a two and a half hour drive to see somebody. But you could filter within five miles of the zip code where your initial meetings were held. So that's one and the same thing. If you're inviting people to an in person event, and you want to make sure that you hit or invite the relevant people who are close to that particular event. That's another use for that.

Brynne Tillman  15:27

I think those are two really great use cases. Yeah, I mean, I love the zip code radius for so many reasons. For example, you and I are in the greater New York area but when you put that in, that's Connecticut. That's Long Island. That's New Jersey, right? Like, but if we could do like, if I can do, you know, a 10 mile radius from Linden, New Jersey, all of a sudden, like I have control over? How far out are these prospects are. Well, I think the zip code radius is amazing. I love that I use it all the time.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  16:13

Good deal. Good deal. Yep. Now, the next one is one that is fairly mundane, I'm sure everyone on the call is doing this but this is just a reminder, Sales Nav allows you to look at everyone who's viewed your profile within the past 90 days, as opposed to just the last five people who've looked at you in the past 90 days on LinkedIn. So just a gentle reminder, don't forget to look at who's viewed your profile and of course, sales nav gives you more leeway, because you don't have to do it necessarily every day, or that's not a bad habit but if you miss a day or so, or if you're on the beach, or whatever and you could just say, Okay, I have 90 days, I'm not going to miss anybody, if I take the time to look at it. So, Brynne, any thoughts on that one? I know that was relatively,

Brynne Tillman  17:11

You know, we say that it's basic, and we know about it, but I think we're underutilizing it. So one of the things that we can do is, let's say you have a list of, you know, the 250 people that you've reached out to over and hopefully you save them and categorize them in lists that you've reached out to, and maybe you've moved, the ones that have responded have now moved outside of a list. So you might say active prospects were create that safe search and you know, reached out engaged, whatever it is that you want us It could even be if you've engaged on their content, and then we almost use the same search name that search the same leads, sorry, not the same search, the same leads, we're gonna name that lead list is engaged on content or invited to event or whatever it is. 

Now we want to pull that list up and look at how many of them visited your profile, they may not have accepted your connection request, they may not have accepted your event, where they're curious enough to see your profile. So these are active people that we're trying to get on the radar of and every once in a while. And again, I'm probably one that doesn't do this enough, either. But you're going to be shocked at how many people you've reached out to that you think are completely ghosting you, that if they looked at your profile, they had a little bit of interest enough for you to reply.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  18:49

Yes, yes. And that's the wonderful thing about LinkedIn is it does show you who's looked at your profile, even if they don't engage with you otherwise, even if they never send you a message. Otherwise, you would never know. Now a couple of new ones. One is called Buyer Intent. And that's just a fancy way of saying lead to work at accounts, where people there are starting to look at your company. 

Brynne Tillman  19:24

for a competitor, I think right?

Stan Robinson, Jr.  19:27

I'm not sure. That one I have to look at but it's people who've indicated some interest in your company either by looking at your profile, looking at the company page, looking at profiles of your colleagues. And all this kind of data is something that the algorithm could do, but we could never do. manually. There's just no way. So this is another way that Sales Navigator works for us by surfacing potential indicators of interest that we would never see ourselves. 

Brynne Tillman  20:07

So I can’t remember exactly what it is. But there's something in there that may not be direct competitors, but they're engaging on content that's relevant to your industry.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  20:18

I think that's the next one, which is category interest. We're gonna talk about that one too, anyway, and that that one's also relatively new. So that one is, if leads and this is also one reason why it's so important to save your leads, so that you're sending signals to the algorithm so that they can let you know as much information as they can. I know, I'm speaking about the algorithm as if it's a person, but it's really working hard for you. So the buyer intent, someone works for a company and someone there is looking to company page, if you have a marketing team that's using LinkedIn advertising, and they're using tags, so that they can retarget people who've looked at your website and all of that the algorithm can factor that in also.

I was just gonna say the the category interest is if they're looking at products that are in your general category, and I don't know all the elements that the algorithm takes into consideration. One is groups that people may have joined, other forms of engagement. What they have on their profile, they been the leads. So all of that is factored into the category interest category.

Brynne Tillman  22:03

Yeah, so there is a list of categories. I put it in, we'll put it in the show notes, I put it in the chat. But it looks like there's, you know, business strategy computing. A lot of like, there's construction and customer support. I mean, there is an enormous amount of categories that you can choose from and then. So I think, you know, and you can even jump down even further, as you said, it's brand new. And as we're recording this, as we're talking about this, it still has that little new button. That's how new it is. So you know, by the time you're listening to this, things may have changed a little. Reach out to us if they have, we'll update you.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  23:01

Exactly, it's never boring with Sales Navigator, there's always something new going on. But the good news is, they're always trying to help us and help us do our jobs better. Now, another category, for lack of a better term is people you interacted with. And by that sales now means people that you've directly messaged, or who viewed your profile, because there may be times when you're doing searches, and you don't want to, and I'm sorry, let me flip it. It's actually people who you viewed on their profile. 

So when you're searching for people, and you're doing lead searches, a lot of times, you don't want to see people that you've already looked at. And so you can set the people you've interacted with to kind of exclude ones that you've already looked at. So you can stay focused on those that are new. Now, if you've direct message them, and this is something I need to find out where that also includes in-mails because if you've already In-mailed someone and you say, Okay, I don't want to worry about people I've already reached out to I'm only interested in new ones that I haven't reached out to.

Brynne Tillman  24:22

This is so interesting. I haven't used that yet. So, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I do think it helps that we do often have an issue and I've been a victim of this plenty of times where they reach out like they'd never reached out to you before like you've never had a conversation before and here is the big challenge around this. LinkedIn Sales Navigator has its own inbox, and then linkedin.com.

So you could have had an entire conversation with someone on linkedin.com but when you check the message inside of Sales Navigator, you're like, Oh, we never had a conversation. And so this particular filter really helps. So that you don't kind of it's not stick your foot in your mouth, but it's like, you're not embarrassed, like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.

Stan Robinson, Jr.  25:21

Yeah, yeah, yet another reason why they need to combine the inboxes or allow us to be able to look at all of them in one for that very reason. So yeah, yeah, thank you, Brynne and now, the last one are lead lists and the ability to include or exclude lead lists. When you're doing searches, we talked about the same thing with accounts. When you're doing lead searches, the same logic applies. If you have a lead list. And for some reason, you want to include it in your search, you can do that if you want to exclude unless you've taken the time to set up, you can do that as well, in a search.

Brynne Tillman  26:05

Yeah, and I'm gonna kind of reiterate this, because I think it's important and there's always overlap anyway, is, you know, this, that particular lead list is great in combination with who's viewed your profile in combination with, you know, other triggers, you know, maybe it's, you know, your candidate you're saved leads. And then you want to see who have those saved leads or following your company. Because each of these combinations of filters, you can really create a warmer and warmer opportunity unless the last thing is don't forget about the second degree connections, map out your social proximity. Who can help you get to all of these people?

Stan Robinson, Jr.  27:03

Yep. Yep. So true. Yeah, I want to dive into more detail about the different combinations and future episodes because, yeah, because that's like Sales Navigator 300 series stuff. So yep. Looking forward to it. Brynne, thank you. This has been awesome. Always fun. And I'd also encourage those of you who are watching the replay to reach out to us with your questions, and the types of things you'd like us to talk about here, because we're always looking for that kind of feedback. Ready? Thanks, everybody. Have a great holiday. See you next week. Bye. Bye. 

Outro 27:50

Thanks for listening and join us again for more insights on Sales Navigator and social selling strategies that will differentiate you from your competitors and accelerate your sales success. In the meantime, you can go to socialsaleslink.com/library for free content on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and social selling.