This guide helps Salesforce Full System Admins successfully:

• Configure a Salesforce CRM  with LinkedIn Sales Insights and
  
• Install, configure, and implement the enrichment of your CRM with data from LinkedIn Sales Insights.

This guide elaborates on the prerequisites, important callouts and procedural information to complete these tasks.   

If you already have a CRM synced with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can simply link LinkedIn Sales Insights to the same instance. If your CRM is not synced with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can still connect your CRM with LinkedIn Sales Insights.  You can connect your CRM directly from the CRM page in Sales Insights. This section takes you through the following steps:

1. Choosing your CRM instance.
   
2. Signing into the CRM you want to connect to.
   
3. Installing the CRM LinkedIn Sales Insights App to enable CRM writeback.

If you connect the CRM directly to Sales Insights rather than through Sales Navigator, the following Sales Navigator integration features will not be available:

• Reports will not display the option to prioritize accounts by Sales Navigator metrics, such as Sales Connectivity and Sales Navigator Activity.  

• Account recommendations based on Sales Connectivity and Sales Navigator Activity are not available.

• While exporting a report, the option to Export to Sales Navigator is not available.  

• When making match corrections between your connected CRM and LinkedIn company records, the match corrections are not applied to your Sales Navigator CRM connection. 

So, if you do have Sales Navigator, we recommend that you link your CRM in Sales Insights using a Sales Navigator CRM connection.

Before you begin, ensure that you have met the following prerequisites:

• You are Salesforce Full System Admin user.
• You are a Full Admin on the LinkedIn Sales Insights contract that you want to connect with Salesforce. 
• The Salesforce edition installed in your environment is one of the following:
  
  • Salesforce Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, or Developer edition
    
  • Salesforce Professional with API access
• You have set aside about 30-40 minutes to complete the entire setup.
• You are using an Enterprise account.    

Complete the following steps to connect your CRM to LinkedIn Sales Insights:

1. Sign in to LinkedIn Sales Insights.
2. In the main navigation pane, on the top right corner, click CRM: Not Connected. 
3. In the CRM integration pop-up, click Settings. 
4. Click Manage displayed for Connection Details. 
   

5. In the Setup screen, review the information displayed and click Set up new instance.  

This launches the guided setup to help you integrate your Salesforce CRM with LinkedIn Sales Insights. 

6. In the guided setup screen, choose either the Production or Sandbox environment of your CRM and click Login.

Currently, we only support connecting to one CRM environment at a time – either the production or sandbox environment. To change which CRM environment you’re connected to, you’ll need to disconnect the selected CRM and reconnect to the desired CRM.

7. In the Log into your CRM screen, review the login domain displayed for your environment and click Login. 

You can click Edit to modify your earlier selection of production or sandbox environment. 

8. Enter your login credentials and wait till you are logged in to the CRM.

This could take a few minutes, after which the LinkedIn Sales Insights screen will automatically refresh to display the status of your connection to the CRM. If your connection is not successfully established, you can attempt to connect again by clicking Retry.

9. Click Next: Install CRM app to enable writeback of LinkedIn Sales Insights data directly to your CRM.   

10. In the Install Sales Insights app in Salesforce screen, to begin installing the App, use the link available in the screen.  

This takes you to the App Exchange from where you can install the App. Click here for instructions on installing the LinkedIn Sales Insights App for Salesforce.

After you have installed the CRM app, the LinkedIn Sales Insights page is refreshed and will detect that you have installed the app. The top right panel will show CRM: Salesforce. The screen also refreshes to tell you that the LSI App is successfully installed in Salesforce.

11. Click Finish and view settings.

12. Review all the settings that are displayed.  

With the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce integration, your sales organization can establish a foundation of a reliable, trusted data source from LinkedIn within your CRM. With this integration, using Sales Insights, you can write back firmographic, department/function, and custom LinkedIn attributes to account records to your CRM daily or on-demand. Using data from Sales Insights, your sales operations team can build better books of business and more effectively guide your sales team to the biggest areas of opportunity.

The following screenshot is an example of a custom LinkedIn Sales Insights component on an account record in Salesforce.

Before you begin your LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce installation and configuration, ensure that your CRM is synced with Sales Insights. If you choose to connect your CRM through Sales Navigator, please contact your Sales Navigator Admin and have them complete the CRM Sync steps outlined in Salesnav.in/crm. If you choose not to connect your CRM through Sales Navigator or your company does not have Sales Navigator, see Section 2 for instructions for connecting your CRM directly to Sales Insights.

You can also ensure that the following prerequisites are met before starting the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce installation and configuration:

• You’ve already synced your Salesforce instance with Sales Insights, either directly or via Sales Navigator's CRM Sync. 
• You have set aside 30-60 minutes to complete the installation and initial testing.
  
• You are a Salesforce Full System Admin user with permissions to view and modify data, and to install applications on any of the following editions:  
  • Salesforce Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited or Developer edition
  • Salesforce Professional with API access. 
    
• MyDomain is enabled on your Salesforce instance.
  Note: This is required to use managed package components or 3rd party apps. For more information on setting up MyDomain in your Salesforce org to enable lightning components, refer to these instructions from Salesforce.
• You are a Full Admin on the LinkedIn Sales Insights contract that you want to connect with Salesforce. 
  
• You have a JavaScript-enabled browser.

The LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce Application provides your organization with the ability to view LinkedIn Sales Insights data on an account record. Accounts that have been enriched by Sales Insights can be analyzed with the LinkedIn Sales Insights report within Salesforce.

LinkedIn Sales Insights custom component - Appears on each account record that you choose to enrich from LinkedIn Sales Insights. The custom component contains firmographic, persona, and LinkedIn custom fields (e.g., LinkedIn Company ID). 

• LinkedIn Sales Insights Report: Allows you to create a report within Salesforce to analyze accounts and associated attributes that you have exported from LinkedIn Sales Insights. 
  
• LinkedIn Company Data tab: Adding this tab within Salesforce allows you to easily view or search LinkedIn company data that is exported from LinkedIn Sales Insights.
• LinkedIn Personas tab: Adding this tab within Salesforce allows you to easily view personas by company, that you’ve defined and exported to your CRM.

Here are a few reminders before you begin the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce installation, to help you enrich your CRM with LinkedIn Sales Insights data:

 

Complete the following steps to install the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce application.

1. Log into the Salesforce organization you want to install the application into.

IMPORTANT: You must be a Full Admin to complete the installation process.

2. Click the following link to access the LinkedIn Sales Insights package for Salesforce:

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N4V00000Fgs5WUAR

3. Review the information displayed on the screen, then click Get It Now.

4. You are prompted to log in to your Salesforce account.

5. After logging in, you are prompted to choose if you want to install in your production environment or in a sandbox environment.

 

6. In the screen that appears, review the information, select the terms and conditions checkbox, and click Confirm and Install.

The installation process will begin. No further action is required until the installation is complete.   

Permission sets in Salesforce enable admins to extend access to objects within their organization without changing profiles. The LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce application includes one permission set, called LinkedIn Sales Insights User, by default. You’ll need to assign the LinkedIn Sales Insights User permission set to any user who will need to view the LinkedIn Sales Insights component. To start, we recommend granting access to just the sales operations team. This is so the sales team is first trained on the definitions and the usage of the Sales Insights fields. 

IMPORTANT: The sync user must have this LinkedIn Sales Insights User permission set assigned to have read and write access for custom objects in LinkedIn Sales Insights. Without this permission set assigned, the sync user will have the read-only status for custom objects and won't be able to perform any tasks.

1. Log in to Salesforce.

2. Click the Gear icon on the top rail and click Setup. 

3. From the left rail, expand Users and click Permission Sets. 

4. From the tabular list of available permission sets, click the LinkedIn Sales Insights User permission set.

5. On the LinkedIn Sales Insights User permission set page, click Manage Assignments.

6. Click Add Assignments. 

7. Select the users who need to be assigned this permission set and click Assign. 

Users who are assigned this permission set can now view the LinkedIn Sales Insights component on the account record.

IMPORTANT: The sync user must have this LinkedIn Sales Insights User permission set assigned to have read and write access for custom objects in LinkedIn Sales Insights. Without this permission set assigned, the sync user will have the read-only status for custom objects and won't be able to perform any tasks.

After the installation is complete, we recommend that you verify the installation by using the following methods:  

• Manually export a single account record to the CRM and verify that the Sales Insights component is visible on the Account Record page and that all firmographic details are also populated. If the Sales Insights component is not visible, you need to add them to the Account Record page. For information, see Add the LinkedIn Sales Insights Component to Account Record Page. 
  
• If you have personas set up to be exported, verify that the persona fields are populated accurately.  

If you encounter any issues during the verification steps, review the Frequently Asked Questions section in this guide.

After verifying the installation of the application, follow the steps below to configure the Sales Insights component in your CRM:  

• Add the LinkedIn Sales Insights component to the Accounts Record Page.
• View reports on LinkedIn Sales Insights Data.
• Manage and assign permissions sets to specific users.
• Add the LinkedIn Sales Insights Company Profiles and Personas tab to Salesforce. 

After installing the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce application, you can add the LinkedIn Sales Insights Component to the account records page. 

1. Log in to Salesforce.
2. Click the Gear icon on the top left rail of the screen and choose Setup. 
   
3. Click the Object Manager tab and click on Account.
4. From the left rail, click Lightning Record Pages.
5. Click the Account Record Page label or relevant custom record page.  

6. On the Account Record Page, click Edit to add the LinkedIn Sales Insights Component to the existing lightning page layout. This action launches the Lightning App Builder.

7. In the Lightning App Builder, from the Components section on the left rail, expand the Custom Managed option to view Sales Insights option.

8. Drag and drop the Sales Insights option to the desired location on the page.

9. Click Save.

You can view and analyze a list of account records and attributes enriched by LinkedIn Sales Insights by accessing the LinkedIn Sales Insights report in Salesforce.

1. Log in to Salesforce and choose App Launcher displayed at the extreme left of the top rail.
2. Choose an app from the menu. For example, Sales.
3. In the app, choose the Reports option.
4. From the left rail, choose All Folders and click LSI Reports.  A tabular list of available LSI reports is displayed. 
   
5. In the LSI Reports folder, click the down arrow for the LinkedIn Sales Insights report and click Edit (Salesforce Classic). With this action, you make this report public, meaning that is available to all standard users.

6. Click Report Properties.

7. In the Report Properties dialog box, click the down arrow displayed for the Report Folder field and select Unfiled Public Reports.

8. Click Save. 

9. Click the Reports tab to return to Salesforce Lightning.

All reports will now display enriched account details and attributes on the records page. A maximum of 2,000 rows is displayed in each report. If your report has more than 2,000 rows, then consider exporting this report.

1. Log in to Salesforce and choose App Launcher displayed at the extreme left of the top rail.
2. Choose an app from the menu. For example, Sales.
   
3. In the app, choose the Reports option.
   
4. From the left rail, choose the reports that you want to view. A tabular list of reports is displayed.
5. Click a report name to view the details of the report. 
   
6. Click the down arrow next to the Edit option.
7. Choose Export.

8. Select Formatted Report and specify a format using the arrows.

9. Click Export. The report is exported and downloaded onto your system.

1. Log in to Salesforce and choose App Launcher displayed at the extreme left of the top rail.
2. Search for and click on either one of the following apps:

• LinkedIn Company Profiles
• LinkedIn Personas

The subsequent page loads the LinkedIn Company Profile information or the LinkedIn Personas information, respectively. From this page, you can review the information displayed or can perform additional actions such as importing new information or changing the owner.

If you need assistance on setting up your CRM connection with LinkedIn Sales Insights, feel free to connect with your Customer Success Manager. You can also visit our Help Center which hosts information on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Sales Insights.

To understand LinkedIn Sales Insights and CRM integration better, review the following Help Center articles:

• LinkedIn Sales Insights CRM Writeback - FAQs 
• LinkedIn Sales Insights CRM Writeback – Salesforce FAQ

This section provides you with answers and information on some of the frequently asked questions on the LinkedIn Sales Insights with Salesforce CRM Integration. 

Usually, if you purchase Sales Navigator after purchasing Sales Insights, and plan to sync CRM in Sales Navigator, then it is best to disconnect the independent connection in Sales Insights, connect the CRM in Sales Navigator, and then link to the Sales Navigator CRM from LSI. With the same CRM connected to both products, actions taken to improve your CRM from one product will benefit the other. For example, account match corrections performed in LSI will benefit accounts in Sales Navigator.

However, here are a few reasons NOT to disconnect your LSI CRM connection:

• You have already corrected a significant number of account match corrections in Sales Insights. If you switch to a Sales Navigator CRM connection, those match corrections won't be preserved and you may need to do them again once the Sales Navigator connection is established.  

• Your company has reservations about syncing the CRM in Sales Navigator because it requires a higher level of permissions granted for objects like leads, whereas Sales Insights requires permissions only at the account level. In this case, you may want to consider syncing only through Sales Insights.

Another option available to you is that you connect your CRM to Sales Navigator and Sales Insights independently, so each product has an independent connection to the same CRM. Actions taken within Sales Insights such as account match corrections will not benefit your Sales Navigator CRM connection, and vice versa, but will avoid the necessity of disconnecting your Sales Insights connection and losing your match corrections.

Consider the following points to understand credit usage in LinkedIn Sales Insights.  

• LinkedIn Sales Insights consumes one credit for every account that you export. Information on consumed credits appears in the CSV report that you can generate on the Exports page. 
• Downloading CSV account reports do not consume additional credits. 
• If the process of exporting accounts fails, you can attempt to export the accounts again without consuming additional credits. 
  
• Companies purchased in previous reports will also not consume additional credits. You can view a complete list of purchased accounts by using the Purchased Accounts option as your source on the Reports page.

A mismatch between the number of credits you are charged, and the number of accounts successfully exported to the CRM could result in one of the following errors described in the table below. Use the recommended steps for each error to resolve them. 

After turning on Daily Export, new records with the related Personas are created in Salesforce within 24 hours. For large batches of accounts, please allow Auto-Sync to run for a few days to ensure that all records are exported successfully. You can view the date of the last successful export on the Exports page.

If you are manually exporting records to Salesforce, you can track the status of the export process on the Exports page.

If you make a change to the configured Persona on the CRM page, please wait 24 hours for the new persona data to be refreshed in your CRM.

The Writeback to CRM functionality in LinkedIn Sales Insights was built to integrate with your CRM seamlessly and flexibly. You can create custom fields on an account record to which you can write firmographic data points from the LinkedIn Sales Insight custom component to the custom field. Follow the steps below in Salesforce Classic view: 

1. Log into Salesforce.
2. Click Setup displayed at the top right corner of the screen. 
3. In the left panel, under Build, expand Create and select Objects. The Custom Objects page displays all custom objects that are currently available. 
4. Click the custom object name. You can choose either company name or persona  name.
5. Scroll down to the Custom Fields and Relationships section on the screen and copy the field label name that you want to write into LinkedIn Sales Insights. 
   
6. On the left pane, expand Customize -> Accounts, and select Fields. 
   
7. In the Account Fields page, scroll down to Account Custom Fields and Relationships section, and click New.  
8. In the New Custom Field page, select the Formula Data Type and click Next.
9. In the page that appears, enter the field label (copied in step 3).
   
10. Choose the Formula Return type from list and choose a value from the Options drop-down list. If you don’t want a value, choose 0.  
11. Click Next.  
12. In the screen that appears, choose Advanced Formula tab and select Insert Field.  
13. In the Insert Field dialog box, scroll through the list box on the right to see if the custom field is available in it. Scroll through all the list boxes and click Insert.  The new formula is populated on the page.
    
14. Optionally, you can click Check Syntax to make sure the syntax of the formula is valid.  
15. Click Next.  
16. In the page that appears, you can determine which users can see this field. Use the checkboxes on the screen to determine who can and cannot see this field and click Next.
17. Choose the page layouts that you want this field on and click Next.
    
18. Click Save. The new field should be available/visible on all account page layouts. 
    

To complete this procedure in Salesforce Lightning view:

1. Click Setup on the top right of the page. 
   
2. Select Object Manager and click Account. 
   
3. On the Account page, click Fields and Relationships. 
   
4. On the Fields and Relationships page, click New.  
5. Follow steps 8 to 18 outlined above.

To create a custom formula to write LinkedIn data to your custom field, follow these instructions.

To write persona information directly onto an account object, you will first need to create a field for the account, and then create a flow using the field.

To create a field:

1. Login to Salesforce.

2. Click Setup from the top left corner of the screen.

3. Click Object Manager and then Account.

4. From the left rail, click Fields & Relationships.

5. From the Fields & Relationships screen, click New.

6. In the New Custom Field – Choose the field type screen, select Number field, and click Next.

7. In the New Custom Field – Enter the details screen, enter information for the following fields: 

• Field Label
• Field Name
• Description
• Decimal Place: Leave it as zero.

8. Click Next.

9. In the New Custom Field – Establish field-level security screen, leave the fields as is and click Next. 

Note that if users want to be able to see this information, those users need to fit into one of the roles displayed on this screen.

10. In the New Custom Field – Add to page layouts screen, modify the location of the field on the page, if required by using the checkboxes available on the screen.

11. Click Save. You can view the new field displayed in the list of fields on Fields & Relationships screen.

You can now create a flow using the Flow Builder and use this field in it.

To create a flow:

1. Login to Salesforce.

2. On the main navigation bar, click Home.

3. From the left pane, expand Platform Tools.

4. Expand Process Automation and select Flows.

5. Click New Flow.

6. In the New Flow screen, select Record-Triggered Flow and click Next.

7. In the subsequent screen, choose Auto-Layout.

8. In the Flow Builder screen, click Edit to configure a trigger for the flow.

9. In the Configure Trigger screen, choose the following options and click Done:

• A record is created or updated for the Trigger the Flow When condition
• After the record is saved for the Run the Flow condition.

 

10. In the Flow Builder screen, click Choose Object.

11. In the Choose Object screen, complete the following steps and click Done:

• Select LinkedIn Persona from the Object dropdown list.
  
• Determine the condition requirements for the objects. As a best practice, we recommend that you set a condition on the persona name. Also, if you have several personas, then you need to create a separate condition for each persona.

12. In the Flow Builder screen,click the + sign to add a decision to the flow.

13. In the Element list, select Decision.

14. In the New Decision screen, add the following information and click Done:

• Label
• API Name
• Outcome Label and Outcome API Name
• Define the condition requirements to execute the outcome. Conditions define the scenarios in which the trigger will be applied. In this case, you would want the trigger to apply if the value of the employee count in the persona is not equal to the number of the decision maker count in the persona account.  

Note: You can add any name for the Label, API Name, Outcome label and Outcome API name fields.  

15. In the Flow Builder screen, click the + sign to add a new Update record.   

 

16. In the New Update Records screen, complete the following steps and click Done:

• Provide a label and an API name.
• Select the Specify conditions to identify records and set fields individually option.
• For the Object field, enter Account.
• For the Filter Account Records section, enter the following values: 

  • ID for Field

  • Equals for Operator

  • Value is personas > Account > Account ID.
    

• Set the Field Values for the Account records field and value. The values you select for this field is the same as what you created earlier.

17. In the Flow Builder screen, click Save.

18. In the Save the flow screen, enter information for the Flow Label and Flow API Name fields.

19. Click Save.

20. In the Flow Builder screen, click Activate. 

21. Return to the Flows screen.

The flow that you just created will be displayed. Every time there is an update to the persona information, the flow is automatically triggered, and information is written onto the account object. Note that data must be pushed, either automatically or manually, for the flow to be triggered.

The following image is a sample of what an account will look like after the flow is triggered and information is written onto the account object. Click here to learn more about using the Flow Builder in Salesforce to automate your business processes.

1. Connect your CRM. All current connections to CRM are powered through a pre-existing CRM Sync connection to a Sales Navigator contract. Once connected, you can easily link your Sales Insights and Sales Navigator contracts to share data. Learn more here.
2. Review your CRM Match Report & perform corrections. It may take up to 72 hours for CRM data to become available in LinkedIn Sales Insights. Immediate export of prior to correcting matches could result in exporting data for the wrong accounts. For best practices on correcting your matches, learn more here. When corrections are made, wait 48 hours for corrections to be reflected and reportable in LSI.
3. Export data from LinkedIn Sales Insights to your CRM. Requires installation and configuration of the LinkedIn Sales Insights for Salesforce application. Daily or on-demand export is available. See the more frequently asked questions related to CRM writeback here.