Learn What LinkedIn Sales Navigator Personas Are and How They Help You Talk to More High-Qualified Leads
In the right hands, LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be a phenomenal lead-generating asset.
What makes it so special is its numerous advanced features and tools for prospecting. Powered by sophisticated algorithms, these features help you strengthen, streamline and declutter your prospecting and sales-messaging processes.
The Sales Navigator Personas feature helps you prospect on LinkedIn smarter. Let’s understand what LinkedIn Sales Navigator Personas are and how they can enhance your social selling so you can talk with serious leads and book more meetings!
Understanding Sales Navigator Personas
The Personas feature on LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables you to identify leads based on your target buyer profile. Creating and utilizing Personas lets you zero in on the right leads within an account. Here is how this works.
Let’s say you’re a financial advisor looking to connect with potential clients on LinkedIn. With Sales Navigator Personas, you can create specific target profiles based on criteria such as function, seniority, job type and geography.
You might want to create a Persona for “high-net-worth individuals” with job titles such as “CFO,” “doctor,” “entrepreneur” or “business owner” and filter to the specific region you operate in.
With this Persona in place, Sales Navigator quickly finds leads matching your target criteria so you can focus your LinkedIn lead generation efforts on connecting with people most likely to be interested in your financial services.
The Benefits of Using Personas in Sales Navigator
Here are some of the key benefits of using Personas as part of your Sales Navigator prospecting strategy.
1. Targeted Lead Identification
Sales Navigator Personas allow you to identify leads that resemble your ideal buyer. This targeted approach saves time and lets you connect with people most likely to engage with your products or services.
2. Personalized Messaging
With Sales Navigator Personas, you can tailor your outreach or LinkedIn connection messages to resonate with your target audience’s specific needs and interests. With the right understanding of their backgrounds and goals, you can craft personalized messages.
3. Deep Account Insights
Sales Navigator Personas provide you with valuable insights into your target accounts. By monitoring Persona growth, you can identify trends, opportunities and potential areas for engagement in your outreach & messaging strategy.
4. Enhanced Networking
Sales Navigator Personas enable you to find common connections, mutual interests and shared experiences with your prospects, providing valuable talking points and helping you establish rapport during your conversations.
5. Continuous Improvement
You can refine and optimize your targeting strategy by analyzing the performance of your Personas and tracking their effectiveness. You can assess which personas in LinkedIn Sales Navigator generate the most promising leads, enabling you to iterate and improve your approach over time.
Creating a Sample Persona on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Let's walk through the process of creating a Persona step-by-step and highlight key components to consider.
Step 1: Access the Personas Feature
To begin, log in to your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account and navigate to the homepage. Look for the "Personas" tab, which displays the available Personas in Sales Navigator.
Step 2: Define the Persona Criteria
Click on the "Create Persona" button to start crafting your Persona. Consider relevant examples of your target audience.
Let’s return to the example of a financial advisor looking to connect with potential clients. In this case, the key components to consider when defining your Persona criteria are:
- Function: Choose the job function that aligns with your target audience. For a financial advisor, this could be “finance,” “investment” or “wealth management.”
- Seniority: Select the seniority level that corresponds to the decision-making authority of your ideal audience. Options may include “manager,” “director” or “executive.”
- Job Title: Specify the job titles most likely to represent your target audience. Using our example, high-paying jobs are best, like "lawyer," which is especially helpful if you also serve a niche like legal professionals.
- Geography: Determine the geographical area where you want to focus your outreach. It can be a specific region or even by a country-wide or global scope depending on your target market.
Step 3: Save and Name Your Persona
Once you have defined the criteria for your Persona, give it a name and save it. Choose a name that is descriptive and easy to remember. For instance, you could name your Persona “Finance Professionals in New York.”
Step 4: Utilizing Your Persona in Sales Navigator
Now that you have created your Persona, you can start leveraging it in Sales Navigator. Here are a few key areas where you can utilize your Persona:
- Lead Search: When conducting a lead search, use the Personas filter to refine your results. This will help you find leads who match your defined criteria, making your prospecting efforts more targeted and efficient.
- Account Pages: When viewing an account page, the top card displays the available Personas associated with that account. You can access an auto-populated search with the company’s name and the selected Persona filter already applied to quickly access advanced filters and save time in your search.
- Relationship Explorer: The Relationship Explorer tab on an account page showcases the Personas of the top leads in that account. This information helps you identify decision-makers and key individuals within the targeted account for more effective relationship-building.
Remember, the important elements for crafting a Sales Navigator Persona are function, seniority, job title and geography. By defining these criteria based on your target audience, you can create a Persona to help you connect with the right leads and tailor your messaging.
You can also improve prospecting efforts when you add a portfolio to LinkedIn. It’ll help you get better and quicker responses from the prospects you reach out to and showcase content as part of a LinkedIn social selling best practice.
Supercharging LinkedIn Lead Generation with Sales Navigator
To complement how you use Personas, Sales Navigator has several features to better prospect on LinkedIn. Here are some tips to help you maximize lead generation through Sales Navigator:
Utilize Advanced Search Options and Filters
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a wide range of advanced search options and filters that let you target your ideal prospects precisely. Some of the filters you can use are job title, company name, industry, location and seniority level. Leveraging these filters strategically will help you narrow down your search results and focus on leads that are most likely to convert into clients.
Leverage Sales Navigator’s Search Criteria
Make the most of Sales Navigator’s search criteria to identify ideal prospects for your business. Tailor your search based on specific characteristics that align with your target audience.
If you are a business coach, for instance, you may want to search for individuals in managerial roles within the industries you specialize in. Refining your search criteria lets you discover prospects who are more likely to be interested in your services.
Save and Organize Leads within Sales Navigator
Effective lead management is crucial for successful lead generation. Sales Navigator provides features to help you save and organize leads for easy access and followup. When you come across a promising lead, save them to your "Saved Leads" list. You can also create custom lists to categorize leads based on specific criteria such as industry, job function or location.
Take Advantage of Sales Navigator Insights
Sales Navigator offers valuable insights on saved leads and accounts. Take the time to review the insights available for each lead, such as recent activity, shared connections and engagement with your content. These insights can provide valuable conversation starters and help you tailor your approach to establish a more personalized connection with your prospects.
Regularly Monitor Lead Updates
Sales Navigator lets you receive real-time notifications and updates about your saved leads and accounts. This information can present timely opportunities to engage with your leads and showcase your value proposition.
Leveraging LinkedIn AI to Use Sales Navigator Personas for Better Prospecting
Manual messaging and outreach on LinkedIn isn’t optimal for modern sales professionals. It requires time & effort and makes it difficult to pinpoint your best-fit prospects & optimize responses in sales conversations.
Switch, instead, to automated prospecting for better results.
At CoPilot, we help LinkedIn prospectors unlock their true sales potential through cutting-edge technology. CoPilot is a LinkedIn AI automation tool that can help you design, run, and analyze elaborate outreach campaigns for more effective lead generation.
