Reduce Time Spent on Non-Selling Activities with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Editor's Note: Enjoy this special encore post, which was one of our readers' favorites in 2020. It originally published on February 12, 2020. 

It might be a new year, but one of the biggest challenges facing sales organizations remains the same — how to effectively prioritize time to maximize impact. Translation: How do we cut down on the day-to-day administrative tasks to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects, and close more deals?

Every quarter, we’re focused on working side-by-side with each of you — our amazing customers — to identify new Sales Navigator features that will have a direct result on your business. This quarter has been no different, and we're excited to share several features that center squarely on driving greater efficiency across the entire sales organization -- helping you spend less time on the mundane and more time on the buyer. 

So, let’s jump right in! 

Adding more value to your CRM 

You may remember that last quarter we announced data validation, step one in ensuring Sales Navigator and your CRM were no longer simply acquaintances, but rather new best friends. This quarter, that friendship continues to blossom.

With thousands of you syncing Sales Navigator with your CRMs every day, we know that the process of adding new contacts has remained time consuming. Have no fear -- we’ve now got you covered with our new Contact Creation feature!

Remember the painful manual steps it used to take to add new contacts, often requiring cutting and pasting countless fields? With the click-of-a-button in your Sales Navigator lead page or lead list, you can now write-back publicly available information about your lead into your Salesforce CRM (and soon-to-come for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales) quickly and easily without leaving Sales Navigator.

And, if you’re worried about the possibility of creating duplicate leads and having to manually scrub your CRM, Sales Navigator will check if there are any existing contacts in your database and flag issues to ensure CRM cleanliness. 

Stay in the ‘Flow'

Whether you’re in sales or marketing, procurement or engineering, interruptions to your workflow can be a productivity killer. It’s why we are continuously reimagining ways in which Sales Navigator can add value, not cause more work. We have two new features we are excited to introduce with that in mind:

• Smart Links: An evolution of our PointDrive feature, Smart Links allow you to quickly and easily package and share content within your Sales Navigator workflow, track viewing behavior, and gain insights on who is engaging with your content. 
• Alert! - Account Preparing to Grow: This new alert is generated when there is growth in the number of job postings by a saved account, indicating that the company is preparing for growth - a signal that there may be new opportunities that the sales organization could pursue with this account.

Reduce search time

Why reinvent the wheel? This is especially true for sales organizations. If your Sales Navigator search is working -- great! And, if it’s working for you, the odds are that others in your organization might find value in it, too. To increase your sales organization’s efficiency, we are introducing two new Sales Navigator search features:

• Save Account Searches: Once you find an account search that works, you can easily save it and avoid having to repopulate the account queries every time you log into Sales Navigator. You will be automatically updated any time a new Account meets your search criteria. 
• Share Lead Searches: Once you identify the perfect lead search query, you can now share that search with other teammates with a Sales Navigator contract.

Customize your experience

No one knows what you need more than you, and although we can create updates and new features based upon what you share with us, at the end of the day, we know that sometimes you simply need to be able to customize the tool to fit your needs. This quarter, you can find greater customization in:

• Usage Reporting: This quarter, we’re introducing new actionable summary spotlights and the ability to opt out of LinkedIn.com activity tracking in your personal Sales Navigator settings, removing your Linkedin.com activities from blended metrics (days active, searches performed, and profile views) in Usage Reporting. Also, this quarter, we’re excited to offer all of the refreshed Usage Reporting features that we announced last quarter -- new navigation, metrics, and data filters -- to our Team customers, giving their administrators a clearer view into sales reps’ behaviors on Sales Navigator.
• Mobile Experience: In addition to making the mobile app available to all product supported languages, users are now able to customize their mobile experience by filtering the alerts they want to receive. 

Reduce search time

Why reinvent the wheel? This is especially true for sales organizations. If your Sales Navigator search is working -- great! And, if it’s working for you, the odds are that others in your organization might find value in it, too. To increase your sales organization’s efficiency, we are introducing two new Sales Navigator search features:

• Save Account Searches: Once you find an account search that works, you can easily save it and avoid having to repopulate the account queries every time you log into Sales Navigator. You will be automatically updated any time a new Account meets your search criteria. 
• Share Lead Searches: Once you identify the perfect lead search query, you can now share that search with other teammates with a Sales Navigator contract.

Customize your experience

No one knows what you need more than you, and although we can create updates and new features based upon what you share with us, at the end of the day, we know that sometimes you simply need to be able to customize the tool to fit your needs. This quarter, you can find greater customization in:

• Usage Reporting: This quarter, we’re introducing new actionable summary spotlights and the ability to opt out of LinkedIn.com activity tracking in your personal Sales Navigator settings, removing your Linkedin.com activities from blended metrics (days active, searches performed, and profile views) in Usage Reporting. Also, this quarter, we’re excited to offer all of the refreshed Usage Reporting features that we announced last quarter -- new navigation, metrics, and data filters -- to our Team customers, giving their administrators a clearer view into sales reps’ behaviors on Sales Navigator.
• Mobile Experience: In addition to making the mobile app available to all product supported languages, users are now able to customize their mobile experience by filtering the alerts they want to receive. 

Sales Navigator Application Platform program integrations

Our Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) partnerships are vital in ensuring that the tools you rely on to power your sales org easily integrate into Sales Navigator to limit disruption to your workflow. This quarter, we welcomed a new analytics integration with our SNAP partner InsightSquared.

To learn more about the updates in today’s announcement, visit our QPR page.