LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a set of subscription-based offerings from LinkedIn. The offerings are designed to help sales professionals identify prospects, receive alerts on prospects' activities on LinkedIn and request introductions to prospects through shared connections. Subscriptions are sold on a monthly or annual basis. 

Sales Navigator includes premium features that are not available to the free or lower-tier accounts on LinkedIn. These features include:

• InMail, which LinkedIn defines as "messages sent directly to another LinkedIn member you're not connected to." Each Sales Navigator plan provides a certain number of InMail messages per month.
• Saved leads (the number of saved leads varies based on the selected plan)
• Advanced lead and company search
• Lead recommendations (e.g. customized suggestions for people at target accounts)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration, including notes and tags created about prospects
• Real-time updates (e.g. job changes and other relevant activity from prospective customers)
• Expanded lists of "who viewed your profile"

LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be an effective way to reach elusive B2B buyers, who no longer answer their phones or open their emails. As of this writing, LinkedIn (which is owned by Microsoft) has over 500 million LinkedIn users worldwide, so the thinking is that there's a good chance that a company's target customers will be LinkedIn members.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is part of the LinkedIn service offering. Once a LinkedIn Sales Navigator plan is purchased, users login to LinkedIn to gain access to the features associated with that plan. There are currently three plans available: Professional (for use by individuals), Team (for sales teams) and Enterprise (for sales teams interested in expanded capabilities).The LinkedIn website provides a product comparison table that lists the capabilities provided by each plan, including features available to free users of LinkedIn.