The LinkedIn Sales Navigator Impact On B2B Software Organisations In Asia Pacific

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Plus  is a B2B, deep sales platform that has features for lead generation, account prioritisation, customer engagement, and more. It enables sales teams to prospect and cultivate relationships with high-value customers by leveraging integrated, accurate, and first-party professional data.

LinkedIn commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview nine representatives and conduct a global Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and to better understand the return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realise by deploying Sales Navigator.¹

This abstract is a regional spotlight of the global TEI study, focusing on the use of Sales Navigator in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and its value to APAC sales organisations. Decision-makers at two APAC software organisations were interviewed for the study:

• A director of sales development at a software organisation with 200 Sales Navigator users.
• A business manager at a software organisation with 61 Sales Navigator users.

Although these APAC software organisations presented different use cases, they shared similar challenges and pain points, including inefficiencies related to unreliable customer data, the inability to penetrate segments based on geography, and the lack of data confidentiality.

challenges apac sales organisations faced

The two interviewed representatives at APAC software sales organisations reported that prior to adopting Sales Navigator, they lacked the ability to prospect, identify, and reach out to quality leads using existing, third-party data sources, such as lists. Their organisations also used limited, outdated sales tools. Additionally, the lack of CRM integration with the sales tech stack created significant inefficiencies for the sales team. Without automation, data living in disparate sources required team members to manually locate, cross-reference, deduplicate, and update accounts when prospects changed jobs or updated their professional profiles, which naturally was subject to human error and inaccuracies. This reliance on inadequate, siloed data — combined with the expense of third-party prospect lists and unsuccessful cold calling — posed significant obstacles to sales management. It hindered their productivity and their ability to identify, create, and maintain reliable lists of high-quality leads and effectively engage with them.

After the deployment of Sales Navigator, the organisations addressed these challenges by enabling their sales teams to prospect and cultivate relationships with high-value target customers and leverage integrated, accurate, first-party professional data, leading to team efficiencies and revenue growth.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS FOR apac sales organisations

The two interviewees’ organisations adopted Sales Navigator to enhance their prospecting capabilities, increase their sales pipelines, and improve productivity across their sales teams. To accomplish this, they sought to overcome challenges in their legacy environments, including:

• Inefficient prospecting and lack of buyer intent signals. Before adopting Sales Navigator, the interviewees’ sales teams struggled with accurately identifying and engaging high-quality prospects who showed buyer intent. Their existing tools were limited and lacked essential features, such as filter and search capabilities, insights, and reporting functionalities, and the ability to create targeted lists. Without these automated functions, teams had to invest excessive time and effort performing manual, sales-related tasks.
• Poor data quality and accuracy. With inconsistent customer data scattered across multiple sources, the sales teams could not rely on existing lead information and had to direct excessive resources to manually merge, deduplicate, and correct the siloed data, which resulted in missed sales opportunities lost revenue, and growth potential.
• Inability to integrate with the CRM. The interviewees expressed frustration over the lack of integration between their existing tools with their CRMs. The absence of integration, automation, and sync functionality resulted in manual work processes and inconsistent data management. As a consequence, they were unable to effectively combine and analyse data, leading to a lack of insights into prospects’ behaviors and the inability to make data-driven, strategic adjustments when necessary.

sales navigator Features

The interviewees’ organisations chose to invest in Sales Navigator for the following reasons:

• Automation and integration. With its automated features and integration with the CRM, the interviewees in APAC noted their organisations could nearly eliminate the manual tasks associated with customer prospecting and engagement, remove redundancies and duplication of effort, and enable real-time, seamless data sharing. And with improved data accuracy, sales teams experienced increased efficiency, while sales leadership could make better and more strategic decisions.
• Access to accurate intent data. The interviewees reported that the population of intent data through automated tracking of prospect activities, such as website visits and interactions with LinkedIn posts and advertisements, allowed sales teams to determine a prospect’s genuine interest in their offerings. This information was valuable for their sales teams as it helped them identify potential prospects who were more likely to convert into customers.
• Data confidentiality. The APAC interviewees noted that data confidentiality, i.e., the protection of sensitive customer data, was an important aspect when choosing to invest in Sales Navigator. As the tool collects data on user activity, such as searches performed and connected contacts, it was important the platform provided ways to maintain this usage pattern data confidential.

Key Results for apac sales navigator users

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organisations include the following quantified benefits:

• A gain in net operating profit due to the increase in sales opportunities. By leveraging more accurate data, higher-quality leads, and improved messaging, the interviewees noted their APAC organisations experienced an increase in qualified sales opportunities, leading to more closed/won deals and ultimately generating additional revenue.

  The business manager at an APAC software organisation shared, “Due to growth in our pipeline and deal size, we saw a 10% annual increase in revenue after we launched Sales Navigator.” 

• Efficiencies gained in sales research efforts. By leveraging accurate and detailed professional data, automated capabilities, and seamless CRM integration, the organisations’ sales teams more efficiently identified qualified leads ready to buy and engaged prospects with more effective messaging, resulting in increased opportunities and a positive impact on the bottom line.

  The director of sales development at an APAC software company noted: “Both our outbound and our inbound sales teams have seen significant time savings because of Sales Navigator. While depending on the workflows, I’d say our outbound team members save about 2 to 3 hours per week, whereas our inbound team members save about 1 hour per week.”

Benefits that provide value for the APAC organisations but were not quantified in this abstract include:

• Data accuracy and enrichment. Since Sales Navigator is built on the established LinkedIn professional platform, interviewees noted that the organisations’ sales team benefitted from access to real-time, first-party professional data, as it ensured data accuracy and empowered the sales teams to approach the available information with confidence. The director of sales development explained: “The data quality continues to improve because of the LinkedIn ever-updating platform, so that’s definitely a plus. This in turn gives everybody the ability to do their tasks more easily and effectively communicate with their prospective customers.”
• Employee collaboration and engagement. According to the interviewees, the adoption of Sales Navigator resulted in improved employee engagement and a better overall employee experience. Through seamless automation and transparency, Sales Navigator offered team members the ability to collaborate, perform tasks more easily and efficiently, and establish a deeper relationship with prospective clients. The director of sales development highlighted this point, stating: “The product plays a key role in multithreading opportunities, identifying other stakeholders in the organisation who can accelerate the deal. [Sales Navigator] helps us progress deals faster and engage with different teams within an account.”
• Identification of high-value leads with intent to buy. Sales Navigator incorporates a feature that identifies buyer intent. This enabled the organisations’ sales teams to track a prospect’s journey and prioritised those prospects who were most likely to engage based on intent signals, such as responding to an InMail, visiting the organisations’ LinkedIn pages, and interacting with its posts. This functionality empowered the sales teams to prioritise their efforts efficiently and concentrate on high-value prospects who were more likely to make a purchase.