Ivona Mikulčić | Updated September 4, 2026 | 18 min read

How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator (2026 Tutorial): 12 Ways to Find, Nurture, and Convert Leads

I’ve run hundreds of outbound campaigns through LinkedIn Sales Navigator over the past four years. Some flopped. Most worked. A few generated pipeline worth six figures from a single saved search.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Sales Navigator is the single best prospecting tool on LinkedIn, but most teams use about 20% of what it can do.
LinkedIn now has over 1.3 billion users worldwide, growing 8.33% year-over-year (47 LinkedIn Statistics 2026 (Users & Demographics Data)) (47 LinkedIn Statistics 2026 (Users & Demographics Data)) (DemandSage, 2026). Your buyers are on the platform. The question is whether you can find the right ones fast enough.
In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly how to build prospect lists, nurture leads, use Advanced plan features, and automate outreach using Sales Navigator, step by step.

How to Build a Prospect Contact List with Sales Navigator

Prospecting always starts with getting a list of high-quality leads you want to target. On Sales Navigator, you can automatically search for your ideal customers and group them in your contact list.
Here’s how to do that efficiently:

Use the advanced search filters to find new leads

On a regular LinkedIn account, you get 18 filters to help you narrow down who your prospect is. While that might seem like a lot, there are no lead search filters to help you get the list you need.
Sales Navigator gives you 50+ filters spanning leads, accounts, intent signals, and workflow (How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator Filters to Refine Targeting) (How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator Filters to Refine Targeting). That’s a massive step up from free LinkedIn. Filter counts change as LinkedIn updates the product (the number has grown over the past year alone), but the core advantage stays the same: you get far more room to narrow down on the accounts that matter.
To find this option, simply:
  • Go to your homepage on Sales Navigator
  • On the top screen, choose between lead or account filters
  • Depending on what you choose, you’ll get a list of filters you can use
  • Apply the ones you want to help you modify the contacts in the results
The major difference between lead and account filters is that leads focus on specific people, while accounts focus on specific companies.
So, your customer profile will determine what filter category you’ll use. There are also no limits to the number of searches you can make, so use this to your advantage.
Pro Tip Use the Boolean search operators available to make your list even more specific. Sales Navigator has five of them: AND, OR, NOT, Quotes, and Parentheses.
You can use these Boolean operators under the Job title filters or the keyword field.
So, for example, in the image above, this search filter is looking for prospects whose job titles are sales managers and sales directors.

Use Buyer Intent filters to find leads already engaging

This is the filter category most teams overlook, and it’s the one with the highest signal-to-noise ratio.
Sales Navigator now includes a “Viewed your company page recently” toggle in the Buyer Intent section of the Lead Search filter panel, alongside the existing “Account has buyer intent,” “Following your company,” and “Viewed your profile recently” options (LinkedIn Sales Navigator 2026 — Guide to New Features).
The “Who Viewed My Company Page (last 90 days)” filter is probably the biggest recent addition. Located under Buyer Intent in Lead Search, it shows people who visited your LinkedIn company page (Sales Navigator Filters: Advanced Search Guide 2026 - LinkedIn Outreach Automation & AI SDR | Sbl.so).
This surfaces accounts showing research behavior that signals purchase intent, such as visiting your company page, engaging with your content, or searching for your product category (10 LinkedIn Sales Navigator Filters That Find Ready-to-Buy B2B Leads - traxy.ai).
Buyer Intent is available to Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus edition users (Buyer Intent in Sales Navigator | Sales Navigator Help). However, the “Who Viewed My Company Page” filter is now available across all plans, including Core (LinkedIn Sales Navigator 2026 — Guide to New Features).
Here’s why this matters for outreach: these leads are already warm. They’ve interacted with your brand before you ever reached out. If you’re using lemlist Intent Signals, you can layer even more intent data on top, like hiring triggers, funding rounds, website visits, and LinkedIn engagement, then auto-push matching leads straight into your campaigns.

Create different lead lists of your target accounts

Once you have a drop-down of all your target accounts or ideal contacts, segmenting them into a list helps you organize, find and target them even faster. To create a lead list on Sales Navigator, simply follow these steps:
  • Select the leads or contacts you want to add to your list by tapping on the checkbox beside the contact
  • Tap on “Save to List”
  • Tap on the “+” in the drop-down to create a new list and name the list
  • Your contacts will automatically be moved here.
When you need to find your lead lists, you’ll see them on the homepage under “Lead lists”
Pro Tip You can add the same contact to more than one list. However, we recommend not sending messages at the same time if there’s a contact in both sequences to avoid spamming them. To add your contact to more than one list on Sales Navigator, just:
  • Create another search or under the same search, select the same contacts
  • Tap on “Add to another list”
  • Click on the “+” icon in the drop-down to create a new list
  • Name the list and they’ll automatically be in this list as well.

Find the right decision-makers with Relationship Explorer

There’s a feature on Sales Navigator called Relationship Explorer. With this feature, you can create a persona of your ideal customer profile using job title, location, and more.
Based on your ICP, for each new company or account assigned to your team, you immediately get recommendations on the top people you should contact.
  • To access this feature, visit the search bar on the homepage and type in an account
  • From the dropdown, tap on the target company
  • Scroll down and you’ll see a list of spotlights or contacts that you can reach out to
  • Once you tap on a specific contact, you’ll get things like shared experiences and other details to help you send a personalized icebreaker
  • You can also save these contacts to a list by tapping on the “Save” button next to each one.
Once you’ve identified a decision-maker through Relationship Explorer, the next step is crafting a message that actually resonates. With lemlist’s AI Agentic Enrichment, you can pull LinkedIn activity, website data, and CRM context into structured fields, so you can personalize outreach with AI at scale instead of doing it manually.
Pro Tip
A great way to build your persona is to make a search first and then edit the details of the persona to match your preferred profile

Which Sales Navigator Plan Do You Need?

Before diving into nurturing and outreach, it helps to know what you’re paying for. There are three plans: Core, Advanced, and Advanced Plus, each priced for a different stage of sales-team scale (LinkedIn Sales Navigator Cost: How Much Is It in 2026?).
Here’s the quick breakdown:
Core ( $119.99/month, or $89.99/month billed annually (Your Guide to LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing [2026])): Advanced lead and company search, saved searches, alerts, custom lists, and 50 InMail credits. Best for individual sellers.
Advanced ( $179.99/month, or $139.99/month billed annually (Your Guide to LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing [2026])): Everything in Core plus Smart Links, TeamLink, CSV account uploads, Buyer Intent signals, and enterprise tools like SSO. Best for small sales teams.
Advanced Plus ( ~$1,600/seat/year with custom pricing (Your Guide to LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing [2026])): Everything in Advanced plus CRM sync, data validation, and advanced enterprise integrations. Best for large sales organizations that need their CRM and Sales Navigator to stay in sync automatically.
CRM integration that automatically logs Sales Nav activity into Salesforce or HubSpot is only available on Advanced Plus (LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing 2026: Free ROI Calculator for Agencies). On Core and Advanced, you are copying lead data manually or paying for a third-party connector (LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing 2026: Free ROI Calculator for Agencies). This is worth knowing before you buy, because it’s the limitation that trips up the most teams.

How to Nurture Leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once you have your contacts neatly segmented with details you can use for outreach, it’s time to reach out to them. At this stage, personalization is an important key to getting results, especially in B2B sales.
Automation is also helpful in letting you reach all of your saved contacts within a short period. Here’s how to nurture your leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

Connect and send InMails

You can reach out to your contacts via connection messages or InMails.
Connection requests help you to bring 2nd or 3rd-degree connections into your inner network. So when they agree to connect, you can see each other’s posts, send messages and more. You can choose to either send a connection request with a note or without one, but we recommend adding one.
  • To send a connection request, next to the contact, tap on “connect”
  • Next, tap on “Add a note”
  • Enter a brief connection note and then send
  • Your contact will receive a connection with your message
LinkedIn InMails on the other hand, is a premium feature that allows you to send messages to leads you do not want to connect with. This feature is especially handy because you cannot send more than 100 connections per week.
So if you need to reach more people within a short period, you should use this.
To send an InMail, simply follow these steps:
  • Visit the contact profile
  • Tap on the message button
  • Enter your InMail subject and body
  • Review and send
Pro Tip
Since connection requests and InMails have character limits, you have to personalize your messages and doing it manually will take forever. We recommend connecting your sales navigator to an outreach tool that will allow you to send personalized messages at scale. Warm intros sourced through TeamLink (more on that below) can also be pushed straight into a lemlist multichannel outreach sequence, so you follow up across LinkedIn and email without switching tools.

Export Leads and Get Emails

Sending LinkedIn messages is a great first approach. But nurturing should involve multichannel outreach to maximize touchpoints.
While using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can export your contacts to your outreach tool, get email addresses from this export, and send even more tailored messages that’ll get you that booking call.
A few things to know before you export:
Sales Navigator has a limitation of 2,500 results per search, divided into 100 pages of 25 results each. While this may seem like a large number, it can be restrictive for large-scale lead generation efforts (How to Export List from LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A Step-by-Step Guide). If your search returns more than 2,500 leads, you’ll need to split it into smaller segments using additional filters (e.g. by geography or company headcount).
Also, there is still no native CSV export button in Sales Navigator. CRM sync that automatically logs activity is only available on Advanced Plus (LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing 2026: Free ROI Calculator for Agencies), so if you’re on Core or Advanced, you need a third-party tool to get leads out.
That’s where the lemlist Chrome Extension comes in. lemlist is rated 4.6/5 from 2,000+ reviews on G2, and it solves both problems in one step.
With lemlist, you can use Waterfall Enrichment (lemlist’s Email Finder & Verifier) to get their verified email addresses at ~80% find rates, and send them multichannel outreach (emails, LinkedIn messages, cold calls, and SMS) directly from the software.
Here’s how to export your LinkedIn contacts with lemlist:
  • Install the lemlist LinkedIn Chrome Extension
  • Search for your leads on LinkedIn or select a list from your Sales Navigator
  • Export leads one by one, in bulk, or in batches following the steps below:
  1. Scrape leads’ profiles and find their verified emails
    i. From individual leads’ profile
    ii. In bulk, from LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search
  2. Add and edit leads’ data from one spot
  3. Push scraped leads to your existing outreach campaign, or create a new campaign for the new leads!
You can also check out which leads are already in your outreach campaigns so you avoid over-prospecting duplicates.
Pro Tip
With lemlist, you can also get email templates and personalize them with custom text, images and even dynamic landing pages.
There’s also an AI email generator that generates custom emails to help you get conversions faster like the one below.

How to Use Sales Navigator Advanced

On the Sales Navigator Advanced Plus plan, there are more features designed to help you improve your sales process. For one, you get access to an additional 50 InMail credits every month. Some you should consider include:

TeamLink Extend

With this feature, you can increase the size of your current network with your team. So put simply, your colleagues can see if a lead is connected to you already and can ask you to make an introduction for them. But that’s the only thing they can see on your account.
The way it works is that you invite other members of your sales team to see your lead connections. Usually, they’ll receive a link via email to join you. To send a TeamLink Extend invitation simply:
  • On the homepage, tap on Admin located at the top
  • Tap on ‘Account Center’ and then ‘People’
  • Under People, tap on the ‘Users’ tab
  • You’ll see all available, pending and activated license invitations you’ve shared
  • Next, tap on the number next to ‘Available’
  • On the email pop-up window, enter your colleague’s email address
  • For multiple users, separate by comma and then Add
  • Then select ‘TeamLink Extend License’ and then confirm
  • They will be sent an email notification to join.

Smart Links

A smart link is a way for you to group and share content in Sales Navigator. With this feature, you can merge content like your pitch deck, demo video, case study, and product walkthrough in one link that you can share with your prospects. Once they view your smart link, you can track their viewing behavior and see what exactly they want in your product/service.
To create a smart link, simply follow these steps:
  • Tap on ‘Smart Links’ at the top of the Sales Navigator homepage (this will only be available on the advanced and advanced plus plans)
  • Tap on ‘New Smart Link’ and name the link
  • Upload your files to the link or if you prefer, a website
  • Tick the checkbox that says ‘Enable recipient to download viewable files’
  • Review and tap on ‘Create’
  • Copy and share with your prospects

How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Recruiting

Most recruitment teams use either LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator for getting new leads and applicants so it’s definitely useful for recruitment. So if your sales team already has access to Sales Navigator, you can save costs by using it for recruiting.
With the advanced search filters, you can find specific applicants that match what you’re looking for. So, simply filter based on the job profile or candidate you’re looking for. In the example below, you can tell this filter is looking for senior software engineers.
Plus, once you save this search, LinkedIn will automatically update the list to include new candidates that fit your criteria.
Next, send a personalized connection request or a message if you’re already a connection, sharing details about the job opening and if they are interested in the role. It’s also helpful if you use a tool like lemlist to help you draft the perfect message.
Pro Tip
Alternatively, if you want to reach out to multiple candidates, you can use the lemlist Chrome extension to find their emails and send them messages directly from the outreach tool. It’s easier to track who’s interested and who isn’t.
  • From the pop-up, simply tap on ‘push to lemlist’ and select how many candidates you want to move.
  • You can also toggle the ‘Find Email’ button on the right to get their email addresses.

4 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales tool you should maximize in your B2B company. Some more ways to take advantage of this tool for growth include:

1. Automate lead generation with ‘saved searches’ target alerts

Chances are you’re going to make the same search more than once, and when you use a combination of several filters, it can be hard getting it right again. With saved searches, you can get updated results every day with the same search. To do this:
  • After curating your search list, select the contacts on the search results page
  • Just under the search bar, click on ‘Save Search’
  • You’ll get a notification asking you to name the search, do this and click ‘Save’
  • Set alerts (Daily, weekly, monthly, never) depending on your preference and save
  • After this, you’ll always find your saved searches next to the search bar

2. Combine Sales Navigator with LinkedIn ads

You can export your leads or prospects from Sales Navigator to LinkedIn Ads for an even more tailored ad strategy. To do this simply follow these steps:
  • Extract the contact list from the LinkedIn sales navigator using a Chrome Extension or a third-party tool
  • On your LinkedIn account, tap on ‘Work’ and then under marketing ‘Advertise’
  • Select your ad account, you’ll be prompted to create one if you don’t have any
  • Under ‘Create’ tap on ‘Create New Account’
  • Scroll down to audiences and click on ‘List Upload’
  • Depending on your list, choose a company or contacts and upload
If you get an error it simply means your file wasn’t modified for LinkedIn’s preferred format. Simply modify the headers on LinkedIn and upload again.

3. Combine Sales Navigator with Taplio

Cold outreach works better when you have a reputable personal brand. Don’t be a bot. (Seriously. Prospects check your profile before they reply to your InMail.)
A great way to build that brand is to interact with the content on your feed and with your connections. With Taplio, you can automate leaving comments, DMs, and even creating LinkedIn posts. Taplio pulls trending content ideas, helps you schedule consistently, and gives you analytics on what resonates with your audience. If you’re running Sales Navigator for prospecting, pairing it with Taplio for brand-building means your outreach lands with people who already recognize your name.

4. Automate outreach with lemlist and LinkedIn Sales Navigator

This is where everything comes together.
Sales Navigator helps you find the right leads. lemlist helps you actually reach them, across channels, at scale, without sounding like a robot.
Here’s the workflow I use:
  1. Build your list in Sales Navigator using the filters and Buyer Intent signals covered above.
  2. Export leads with the lemlist Chrome Extension directly from your Sales Navigator search or saved list.
  3. Enrich contacts with Waterfall Enrichment to find verified emails and phone numbers. lemlist’s Email Finder & Verifier runs multiple data providers in sequence, so you get ~80% find rates instead of relying on a single source.
  4. Launch a multichannel sequence in lemlist that combines LinkedIn connection requests, follow-up messages, emails, and calls in one automated campaign. Each step is personalized with variables pulled from the lead’s profile data.
  5. Track and iterate. lemlist shows you open rates, reply rates, and which channel performs best for each segment, so you can double down on what works.
The entire flow, from Sales Navigator search to first reply, can be set up in under 30 minutes. And because lemlist handles the sequencing and personalization, you spend your time on conversations instead of copy-pasting.

Over to You

Sales Navigator is a powerful prospecting tool. But a tool is only as good as the workflow around it.
The combination that works: use Sales Navigator’s filters and Buyer Intent signals to find warm leads, export them with lemlist’s Chrome Extension, enrich with Waterfall Enrichment, and run multichannel sequences that actually get replies.
I’ve seen this workflow consistently outperform single-channel outreach. The leads are better targeted. The messages are more personalized. The replies come faster.
If you want to try it yourself, start a 14-day free trial of lemlist (no credit card required) and connect it to your Sales Navigator account today.
IvonaIvona Mikulčić
Product Marketing Manager
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