The LinkedIn Sales Navigator Impact On B2B Software Organizations In North America

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Plus  is a B2B, deep sales platform that offers features for lead generation, account prioritization, 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 realize by deploying Sales Navigator.¹

This abstract is a regional spotlight of the full, global TEI study, focusing on the use of Sales Navigator in North America and its value to sales organizations. Decision-makers at three North American software organizations were interviewed for the study:

• A senior manager of global GTM and sales enablement at a software organization with 1,500 Sales Navigator users.
• A director of sales development at a software organization with 110 Sales Navigator users.
• A senior revenue operations manager at a software organization with 110 Sales Navigator users.

CHALLENGES FACED BY north AMERICAN SALES ORGANIZATIONS

The three interviewees in the North American sales organizations reported that prior to adopting Sales Navigator, the ability to prospect, identify, and reach out to quality leads using existing third-party data sources, such as lists, and outdated sales tools was a notable challenge. 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 is subject to human error and inaccuracies. This reliance on inadequate, siloed data — combined with the expense of third-party 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.

Sales Navigator helped the organizations address 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.

While these North American software organizations presented different use cases, they shared similar challenges and pain points, including inefficiencies related to unreliable customer data, fragmented and inconsistent workflows across sales teams, and a strong need for CRM integration.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS for north american sales organizations

The three interviewees’ organizations 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:

• Limited visibility into the sales process. The interviewees reported that in their legacy environment, they experienced insufficient visibility into sales pipelines and performance metrics. This lack of visibility made it challenging to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and optimize sales strategies. They also found that limited visibility could hamper strategic decision-making, impede growth, and result in missed opportunities.
• 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. And they incurred the costly expense of purchasing data lists.
• 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 diminished 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 analyze data, leading to a lack of insights into prospects’ behaviors and an inability to make data-driven, strategic adjustments when necessary.

sales navigator Features

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

• Automation and integration. With its automated features and integration with the CRM, the organizations could nearly eliminate the manual tasks associated with customer prospecting and engagement, decrease 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 engagement with LinkedIn posts allowed sales teams to determine a prospect’s genuine interest in their offerings. This valuable information helped sales teams identify potential prospects who were more likely to convert into customers.
• Enhanced sales team collaboration. The interviewees noted that consolidating and centralizing customer data promoted knowledge sharing, collaboration, and account information exchange across teams. This subsequently translated into increased productivity, response rates, meeting rates, and ultimately, closed/won opportunities.

Key Results for sales navigator users in north america

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations 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 sales organizations experienced an increase in qualified sales opportunities, leading to more closed/won deals and ultimately generating additional revenue.

  The director of sales development at a software firm noted: “We have seen a significant increase in revenue since implementing [Sales Navigator]. I would attribute at least 40% of our revenue growth to the use of the tool. It has helped us identify high-quality accounts, shorten the sales cycle, and ultimately close more deals.”

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

  The senior revenue operations manager at a software company noted: “Sales Navigator enables our teams to better understand and connect with potential buyers, resulting in more effective prospecting and higher-value opportunities. Additionally, the collaboration and efficiency features of the tool have accelerated our sales cycle, allowing us to close deals faster.”

Benefits that provide value for the North American organizations but were not quantified in this abstract include:

• Data accuracy and enrichment. Since Sales Navigator is built on the established LinkedIn professional platform, the organizations’ sales teams benefited 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 at a software company commented: “Having accurate and reliable data is crucial for our sales team. Sales Navigator has significantly improved our data accuracy, allowing us to make informed decisions, prioritize accounts, and target our messaging more effectively. It has been a game-changer in ensuring the quality and integrity of our data, ultimately leading to better outcomes and increased revenue.”

• Hidden allies resulting in warm leads. Sales Navigator revealed colleague relationships at a prospect’s company. Current and former coworkers could provide insights, reach out to their connections, and make warm introductions.

  A senior manager of global GTM and sales enablement at a software company shared: “Sales Navigator uncovers warm leads for us. We find great value in that, and an ideal user would find value in that.”

• Identification of high-value leads with intent to buy. Sales Navigator incorporates a feature that identifies and reports buyer intent, enabling the organizations’ sales teams to track a prospect’s journey and prioritize those most likely to engage based on intent signals such as responding to an InMail, visiting the organizations’ LinkedIn pages, and interacting with its posts. This functionality empowered the sales teams to efficiently prioritize their efforts and concentrate on high-value prospects who are more likely to make a purchase.

  The senior manager of global GTM and sales enablement continued: “With the intent-to-buy dashboard, you can see detailed account activity, the people looking at your profile, account milestones, and contact information. You can bring in all of that to build out lists on a granular level in order to reflect personas. The ability to combine all that data allows you to define your addressable market, see the intelligence behind leads, and prioritize those accounts.”

• Employee collaboration and engagement. Sales Navigator promoted sales team collaboration by allowing the interviewees’ team members to share accounts, leads, lists, and best practices to unlock efficiencies.

  To highlight the improved employee experience, the director of sales development at a software organization mentioned, “With the LinkedIn CRM integration and data source consolidation, we spend significantly less time clicking between systems, enhancing employee satisfaction and promoting cross-team communication.”