How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Find Leads: Filters, Boolean Search, Lists and Outreach

By Muhammad Amir, Searcora Digital Ltd · written for people prospecting on their own seat

Most people who pay for Sales Navigator use it like a bigger LinkedIn search box: type a job title, scroll, send a few messages, give up. The tool is built for something else — a repeatable list of the right people, refreshed by alerts, worked through every week. This guide is that workflow, in the order you actually do it.

It assumes you already have a seat. If you do not, the what Sales Navigator is page explains the product, and you can buy LinkedIn Sales Navigator on your own account from $30 for a month — enough to test this whole process against your own market.

Buy LinkedIn Sales Navigator — from $30 Ask on WhatsApp
Step 1

Decide who you are looking for before you search

Sales Navigator rewards a precise brief and punishes a vague one. Before you open a search, write four lines: the industries you sell to, the company size where you win, the regions you can serve, and the two or three job titles that actually say yes. If you sell to importers, that might be procurement and supply-chain heads at distributors with 50 to 500 employees in three countries.

That brief becomes your filters. Without it, every search is a fresh guess and nothing you save is comparable week to week.

Step 2

Use lead filters and account filters, not just keywords

Sales Navigator has two search modes. Lead search finds people; account search finds companies. Both have far more filters than a normal LinkedIn search, and the filters are where the value is. The groups you will see include:

  • Company: current company, company headcount, company type, company headquarters location, past company.
  • Role: function, current job title, seniority level, years in current position, years at current company.
  • Personal: geography, industry, years of experience, profile language, school.
  • Best path in: connection degree, connections of a named person, past colleagues, shared experiences.
  • Recent updates: changed jobs recently, posted on LinkedIn recently — the two filters most likely to give you a reason to write.
  • Account search adds company-level filters such as annual revenue, headcount and headcount growth, headquarters location, industry and recent activity.

Start with function plus seniority plus geography, then narrow by company headcount. Add job-title keywords last. LinkedIn renames and moves filters from time to time, so treat the panel in your own seat as the reference.

Step 3

Boolean search in the keyword box

The keyword field accepts Boolean operators. Write AND, OR and NOT in capitals, put exact phrases in quotation marks, and group alternatives in brackets:

("procurement manager" OR "purchasing manager" OR "head of sourcing") AND NOT (intern OR assistant)

Use Boolean to catch the many ways companies title the same job, then let filters do the rest. A Boolean string on its own, with no filters, brings back the same noise a normal search does.

Step 4

Save the search, build lists, switch on alerts

This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that turns a search into a pipeline.

  • Save the search. Sales Navigator tells you when new people start matching it, so the list keeps growing without you redoing the work.
  • Save people to a lead list and companies to an account list. One list per market or product line keeps follow-up and reporting clean.
  • Watch the alerts. Job changes, posts and company news on saved leads and accounts appear in your feed. Each one is a natural opening line.
Step 5

From list to conversation: connection request or InMail

Sales Navigator includes 50 InMail credits a month. An InMail that gets any response within 90 days — a reply, an accept or a decline — gives its credit back, so the real cost is the messages nobody answers.

  • Look before you write. Open the profile, read the last post, react or leave a real comment. A message that refers to something specific gets answered far more often than a template.
  • Keep the first message short. One line on why them, one question about their business. No catalogue, no price list, no link in the first message.
  • Use connection requests for people you will contact repeatedly and InMail for senior people who rarely accept strangers.
Step 6

A weekly routine that fits in an hour

  • Monday, 15 minutes: open saved searches, add new matches to lists.
  • Tuesday to Thursday, 10 minutes a day: work the alerts — comment, connect, send the messages that have a reason.
  • Friday, 10 minutes: note which list replied best and move next week’s time there.
Avoid

Mistakes that get accounts restricted

  • Scrapers and export extensions. LinkedIn offers no spreadsheet export of leads, and tools that pull data out break its User Agreement.
  • Automation that sends messages for you at volumes no person would — a common route to a restricted account.
  • Shared logins. One seat works for one person on one account. A team needs a seat each.
Your seat

Getting a Sales Navigator seat on your own account

LinkedIn lists Sales Navigator Core at $119.99 a month and Advanced at $159.99 a month (read 21 August 2026). Through Searcora, Core is $30 a month and Advanced is $30 for one month, $90 for three, $170 for six or $340 for twelve — activated on the account you already use, with no password asked for and nothing that renews by itself. Compare the two tiers on Core vs Advanced, or go straight to buy LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Buy LinkedIn Sales Navigator — from $30 Ask on WhatsApp

Sales Navigator how-to questions

Write down who you sell to first — industry, company size, region and the job titles that sign off — then build that profile with lead and account filters rather than keywords alone. Save the search, save the people who fit into a lead list, switch on alerts, and contact each person when an alert gives you a reason to: a job change, a post, company news.
Only through LinkedIn's own one-month trial, which is shown to eligible accounts: it needs a card, converts to the full list price unless you cancel, and is usually offered only to accounts with no recent trial and no active paid plan. There is no permanent free version.
50 InMail credits a month, more than either Premium plan. An InMail that gets a response within 90 days — a reply, an accept or a decline — returns its credit, so well-written messages cost you less than ignored ones.
Yes. The keyword box accepts AND, OR and NOT in capitals, quotation marks for exact phrases and brackets to group terms, for example ("procurement manager" OR "purchasing manager") AND NOT intern. Use Boolean on top of filters, not instead of them.
LinkedIn does not offer a spreadsheet export of your leads. Browser extensions and scrapers that pull data out of Sales Navigator break LinkedIn's User Agreement and are a common reason accounts get restricted. Keep leads in lists inside Sales Navigator, or sync to a CRM through LinkedIn's own integrations where your plan includes them.
For one person, Core has everything this guide uses: filters, Boolean search, lists, alerts and InMail. Advanced adds the team layer, reporting and Smart Links. Through Searcora, Core is $30 a month month-to-month, while Advanced is $170 for six months against $180 for six months of Core — so for longer terms Advanced is the cheaper one.