How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A Complete Beginner-to-Confident Tutorial

Plenty of people pay for Sales Navigator, run a few searches, send a handful of InMails, and leave the tab closed until renewal. The product only starts working when you see how the pieces connect: searches feed lists, lists feed alerts, and alerts tell you when to reach out.

This tutorial goes in the order you will use it, from picking a plan to a 20-minute daily routine. Features, limits and prices come from LinkedIn's help centre and pricing page as of November 2026, and plan-specific features are marked.

Short answer: buy Core unless you need team features, set up Personas and a few saved searches on day one, save the people you want to follow into lead lists (up to 1,000 per list), let alerts tell you when something changes, and reach out on that change. Sales Navigator finds and organises prospects. It does not send sequences or answer replies, so the teams that get the most from it connect it to an outreach tool.

Key Takeaways

Step 1: Choose the right plan

Sales Navigator comes in three tiers. LinkedIn's compare plans page lists these US prices per seat:

Prices vary by country, so check checkout in your region.

LinkedIn's account types page is the clearest summary of what each tier adds:

• Core: advanced search filters, Lead and Account pages, saved leads and accounts, custom lists, alerts, Relationship Map, and 50 InMail credits a month.
• Advanced: everything in Core, plus TeamLink and TeamLink Extend, Smart Links, Buyer Intent signals, sharing lists and saved searches with teammates, CSV upload of your book of business, and usage reporting. LinkedIn's product pages also list Lead IQ and Message Assist (AI-drafted messages) on Advanced and Advanced Plus.
• Advanced Plus: everything in Advanced, plus two-way CRM sync with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Oracle Sales, admin ROI reporting, and Sales Navigator for Microsoft Teams.

Search and the InMail allowance are the same on Core and Advanced, so a solo seller can run everything in this tutorial on Core. Teams selling into large accounts usually want Advanced for TeamLink and shared lists. Eligible members can trial Core or Advanced; per LinkedIn's billing help, the trial becomes paid one month after it starts. The cost case, and when to skip Sales Navigator altogether, is in Sales Navigator alternative 2026.

Step 2: First-time setup

Older tutorials start with "sales preferences": geography, industries, function and company size. That setting no longer exists. LinkedIn retired it and pointed users to pinned filters and saved searches. Setup now looks like this.

Answer the onboarding questions

Since LinkedIn's September 2026 update, new users are asked four questions: their goals, what they sell, their ideal buyers and their target accounts. LinkedIn says the answers tune recommendations, ranking and alerts, so answer them specifically.

Create your Personas

Personas are saved buyer profiles defined by geography, current job title, seniority and function. You can have five at a time. Two come by default (Director+ and CXO), and you can edit or delete them.

Build one per buyer type, for example "Head of People, UK" and "Finance Director, UK" for a payroll product. Personas then work as a filter in lead search, on Account pages, on the homepage and in Relationship Explorer. They do not change your recommendations.

Pin your filters

In search, click Pin filters and pin the ones you use every time, usually geography, industry, headcount, function and seniority. This is the closest thing to the old preferences screen.

Import your accounts

If you already have a target account list:

• Advanced and Advanced Plus: upload a CSV (from LinkedIn's template) to create an account list or your book of business. LinkedIn matches each row to a company and reports what it could not match. This works for account lists only, not lead lists.
• Advanced Plus: connect your CRM and Sales Navigator can auto-save leads and accounts from it.
• Core: save accounts by hand from search or from company pages.

Step 3: Learn the Home page and alerts

The Home page is where Sales Navigator tells you what changed. It shows alerts on your saved leads and accounts, recommended leads, your Personas, and your book of business.

Alerts are the reason to save anything at all. LinkedIn's alerts overview lists the main types: a saved lead moving to a new company, a saved lead sharing a post, a saved account hiring a director or above, growth signals such as more job posts or new funding, an account slowing down, and buyer intent such as profile views and engagement with your content. Alerts about employees viewing your company page need Advanced or above.

Since September 2026, key alerts also arrive in your normal LinkedIn notifications on every plan, and a weekly catch-up email rounds up what you missed. Advanced Plus teams can route alerts into Microsoft Teams, though LinkedIn does not send Teams alerts about people in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK for now.

The most useful habit in this tutorial: treat an alert as a reason to act within a day or two. A job change or a new senior hire is a short window. We cover which signals tend to lead to deals in LinkedIn buying signals and how to find people who changed jobs.

Step 4: Lead search and Account search

Lead search finds people and Account search finds companies. Most people search accounts first, then leads inside them. This is the short version; for filter stacks, splitting large searches and worked examples, read how to find leads on Sales Navigator.

Filters and spotlights

LinkedIn's filter definitions group lead filters into company, role, personal, buyer intent, best path in, and recent updates. The last three are where the warm leads are:

• Buyer intent: following your company, viewed your profile recently, and viewed your Company Page recently (LinkedIn's release notes list this on all plans; its filter page still says Advanced and above, so check your seat).
• Best path in: connections of, past colleague, past customer, shared experiences, and TeamLink connections (Advanced and above).
• Recent updates: changed jobs in the last 90 days, posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days.

Account search has its own spotlights: accounts with open jobs, recent activity, or buyer intent. Check these warm slices before you scroll a full result list.

Boolean search

The keyword bar and the job title filter accept Boolean operators:

• AND, OR, NOT in capitals.
• Quotes for exact phrases: "head of people".
• Parentheses to group: ("head of people" OR "people director") NOT recruiter.

Write long strings in a notes file and paste them in.

The 2,500 cap and plain-language search

Sales Navigator displays at most 2,500 results for a lead search, even when it says it found 40,000. Split bigger searches by geography, seniority or headcount until each piece fits. Since September 2026 you can also describe the buyer in plain language and let Sales Navigator match beyond your exact keywords; treat those results as a starting point and tighten with filters.

Step 5: Saved searches and their alerts

Once a search returns the right people, save it. Turn on the Save search toggle in the filters pane. LinkedIn's saved search help gives the limits: 50 lead searches and 50 account searches, with weekly emails and Home page alerts when new people or companies match.

A saved search is a standing question: "tell me when someone new fits this". A handful of new matches a week is exactly the volume you can work properly.

• Name searches by Persona and region, for example "Head of People, UK, 50 to 500".
• Editing a Persona does not update saved searches that use it, so re-save after changes.
• Delete searches you no longer work.
• On Advanced and above you can share saved searches with teammates.

Step 6: Lead lists and Account lists

Saved leads and accounts generate alerts. Lists organise them.

• Lead lists hold people. LinkedIn allows up to 1,000 leads per list and 10,000 saved leads in total.
• Account lists hold companies, saved from search or (Advanced and above) uploaded by CSV.

Create lists from the Lists menu or straight from search results. A structure that scales:

1. One account list per segment or campaign, for example "Q1 fintech, UK".
2. One lead list per stage, for example "To contact", "Contacted", "Replied".
3. A short "This week" list of 20 to 30 people you will actually reach out to.

On Advanced and above, lists can be shared with teammates. Lists also work as include or exclude filters in lead search, which stops two reps contacting the same person.

Notes, and what happened to tags

Every lead and account has a notes field, private to you and visible only inside Sales Navigator. Use it for what you learned on a call and the agreed next step. Tags are gone: LinkedIn discontinued lead and account tags in favour of custom lists, so if an older guide says to tag leads by priority, make a list instead.

Step 7: The Lead page and the Account page

The Lead page

Before you write to anyone, check their Lead page for:

• Recent activity: recent posts and comments, usually your best opening line.
• Shared experiences and connections: a mutual connection, school or past employer.
• Best path in: whether you, a connection or (on Advanced and above) a colleague through TeamLink is connected to them.
• Lead IQ (Advanced and Advanced Plus): an AI summary of the lead's background and likely interests.

The Account page

The Account page gives you a company view: headcount and growth, recent senior hires, news and posts, and the people you have saved there.

• Account IQ: an AI summary of the company's priorities, challenges and how your product might fit. LinkedIn's current help page lists it on all three plans, admins can switch it off, and it is not available for every company.
• Relationship Map (all plans): a chart of the buying committee where you place saved leads by their role and spot who is missing. On Advanced and above, cross-company maps let you put a parent company and its subsidiaries on one map.
• Relationship Explorer: suggests people to add to the map. It works on all plans, but the Past Customer and TeamLink insights need Advanced or above.

TeamLink (Advanced and Advanced Plus)

TeamLink shows when someone on your Sales Navigator contract is a first-degree connection of a lead, so you can ask for an introduction instead of writing cold. TeamLink Extend adds colleagues who do not have a Sales Navigator seat. Since September 2026, warm introduction badges and ranked intro paths also appear in search on every plan. Check for a warm path before you spend an InMail.

Step 8: InMail, messaging and Smart Links

How InMail credits work

Per LinkedIn's InMail credits help page:

• Every plan gets 50 InMail credits a month.
• Unused credits roll over, up to 150 in total, and each credit must be used within 90 days.
• If the recipient responds within 90 days, the credit comes back. No response, no refund.

So a well-targeted InMail that gets a reply is effectively free, and a batch of generic ones burns your allowance. Messaging members with an Open Profile, or your own first-degree connections, does not use a credit.

How to write an InMail that gets answered

• Short. The subject allows 200 characters and the body roughly 2,000. Five or six sentences is plenty.
• Lead with them. Open with something specific from their Lead page: a post, a hire, a new role.
• One reason to reply. Ask a question that is easy to answer, not "do you have 30 minutes next week?"
• No attachments or links in the first message. Save the deck for when they ask.
• Edit AI drafts. Message Assist ("Draft with AI", Advanced and above) pulls in lead and account details. Rewrite the draft in your own voice.

A simple shape:

Hi Priya, saw your post about rebuilding onboarding after the Series B. When teams double headcount that fast, payroll changes usually become the bottleneck before anyone notices. Is that on your list yet, or still manageable by hand?

Connection requests follow different rules; see LinkedIn connection request best practices.

Smart Links (Advanced and Advanced Plus)

Smart Links are still offered on Advanced and Advanced Plus. You bundle files such as a deck, case study or video into one link, send it, and see who opened it and what they looked at. They are most useful after a first call, when material gets forwarded around the buying committee.

Step 9: A simple daily and weekly routine

Daily (15 to 20 minutes):

1. Clear alerts on Home. Job changes and senior hires get a message today or tomorrow.
2. Check new saved-search results and save the good ones to "This week".
3. Save anyone who fits from your profile viewers and post engagers.
4. Send five to ten personalised messages or InMails to people on "This week".
5. Reply to everything in the inbox and add notes.

Weekly (about an hour):

1. Delete stale saved searches and tighten noisy ones.
2. Move leads between stage lists and empty "This week".
3. Update Relationship Maps for your top five accounts.
4. Check InMail credits and reply rate. Expiring credits mean you are under-using InMail; running out with few replies means the targeting or message needs work.
5. Export or sync anything that belongs in your CRM.

Where Sales Navigator stops

Sales Navigator is good at two things: finding people who fit, and telling you when something changes about them. Everything after that is on you.

It does not:

• Send a sequence of connection requests and follow-ups.
• Follow up when someone accepts but does not reply.
• Answer replies or hand warm ones to a colleague.
• Notice buying signals outside LinkedIn's own data, such as a pain-point post on Reddit or X.

So many teams pair it with outreach automation: Sales Navigator builds and maintains the list, and a separate tool runs the outreach inside safe limits. Before you do, read how to automate LinkedIn outreach safely and is LinkedIn automation safe in 2026 first.

How this works with Updately

Updately can take over from your Sales Navigator lists without you exporting anything:

• A Sales Navigator List signal imports the leads saved in a Sales Navigator lead list on a schedule. Paste the list URL or pick it from your lists, and new leads you save there keep flowing in.
• A Profile Search signal can take a pasted Sales Navigator search URL and run it for you.
• Both need a LinkedIn account connected to Updately.
• Every lead gets an AI check against your ideal customer profile, and those that fit can be enrolled automatically into a LinkedIn campaign with invites, warm-ups, AI follow-ups, an AI reply agent and a unified inbox.

Your Sales Navigator time then goes on choosing who belongs on the list, and the sending and follow-up run on their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Sales Navigator plan should a beginner buy? Core. Search, filters, lists, alerts and the InMail allowance are the same as Advanced. Upgrade when you need TeamLink, shared lists, Buyer Intent, CSV account upload or Smart Links. Advanced Plus only makes sense if you need the CRM sync.

Do unused InMail credits roll over? Yes. Unused credits carry over up to a maximum of 150, and each one must be used within 90 days. A credit is returned when the recipient responds within 90 days of your message.

Why does my search say 30,000 results but only show 2,500? It displays at most 2,500 results per lead search. Split the search by geography, seniority or company size; how to find leads on Sales Navigator shows how.

How many leads can I save? Up to 1,000 per list and 10,000 saved leads in total. Saved searches are capped at 50 lead searches and 50 account searches.

Can Sales Navigator send automated messages or sequences? No. It finds people, organises them and alerts you to changes. Sending, follow-up and reply handling need a separate outreach tool, connected to your Sales Navigator lists or searches.