How Financial Advisors Can Use Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a prospecting tool that can help professionals find potential leads, organize outreach and build relationships over time. While it’s designed as a B2B platform, client-facing advisors and other financial professionals can leverage Sales Navigator for lead generation. In terms of its value, the typical B2B user realizes a 312% return on investment (ROI), according to a 2023 analysis of the platform conducted by Forrester. ¹ Understanding how this social selling tool works can help you determine whether it makes sense for your advisory firm.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) offers financial advisors services like client lead generation, automated marketing and more. Learn about SmartAsset AMP today.

What Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an AI-powered sales tool that’s designed for B2B sellers who are looking for buyers. While Sales Navigator wasn’t designed exclusively for use in financial services, its features and capabilities make it an attractive marketing tool for advisors.

Using Sales Navigator can help advisors automate much of the work that goes into finding leads. You can use it, along with LinkedIn’s free features, to increase your visibility and support your business development efforts.

Here are some of the possibilities Sales Navigator offers for advisors:

Prospecting

Sales Navigator is designed to help users identify prospects who may align with their target client profile. The advanced search tool allows you to filter results by industry, profession and other characteristics to find the leads you most want to work with.

Lead Organization and Tracking

Sales Navigator simplifies organization by cataloging saved leads. You can then establish custom rules for sorting them, making it easier to track leads by category or “freshness.”

Engagement

Building a rapport is a crucial step in the sales process, and Sales Navigator encourages engagement by providing AI-generated scripts that can be personalized for different buyer personas. All Sales Navigator plans include 50 monthly InMail credits you can use to send messages to prospective clients you’re not directly connected to.

Data and Research

Data collection is central to lead generation, and Sales Navigator is designed to simplify analysis and tracking. You can view data for searches, saved leads and other metrics through the dashboard and easily integrate information with your CRM software or other data analysis tools.

Information Sharing

Ensuring that every member of your team has access to the same information is easier with Sales Navigator. Team members can view leads and prospect notes in a single place while allowing you to determine which information they have access to.

Integrations

Once you’ve collected prospect data, you’ll need to add it to your CRM. Sales Navigator assists with this task through convenient and seamless integrations with many leading CRMs.

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Pure Financial Advisors

We have seen a remarkable return on investment and comparatively low client acquisition costs even as we’ve multiplied our spend over the years.

Pure Financial Advisors reports $1B in new AUM from SmartAsset investor referrals.

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator Plan Comparison

Any time you plan to add a component to your tech stack or marketing suite, it’s helpful to understand what you’re getting. The range of features you have access to with Sales Navigator is determined by the pricing plan you choose.

There are three plans financial advisors can choose from:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Free LinkedIn vs. LinkedIn Premium

If you’re considering LinkedIn for lead generation, it’s important to choose the right iteration of the platform. In addition to Sales Navigator, you can also market your advisory business through the basic LinkedIn platform or LinkedIn Premium.

The basic version of LinkedIn does not require any payment to use. Advisors can use the free version of the platform to conduct basic searches to identify potential prospects and establish connections. The free version does not include InMail; you can only message 1st-degree contacts through the platform.

Premium is a monthly subscription service that’s designed to help you grow your business by building credibility, identifying and engaging with suitable prospects, and increasing your visibility across the platform. Premium Business is geared more toward helping you gain exposure through LinkedIn, while Sales Navigator is a dedicated sales tool. 

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How Financial Advisors Can Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator

If you’re ready to try Sales Navigator, it’s helpful to spend some time familiarizing yourself with what the platform can do. Again, this will largely depend on which plan you choose.

With that in mind, here are some helpful tips to remember:

Polish Your Profile

Before reaching out to leads, check your profile to gauge the type of impression you’re making. A good financial advisor LinkedIn profile highlights your expertise, skills and professional background. It also includes an up-to-date photo, contact information and links to your website/social media profiles.

Set Up a Persona

Sales Navigator allows you to create personas to more easily identify leads that fit your ideal client profile. When you set up a buyer persona, you can select individual criteria to fully define it. You can use the personas you create to search for leads, along with other search filters.

Choose Search Filters

Sales Navigator offers more than 50 filters to help you narrow your search for leads. For example, you may search by company size, geographic region or years of experience. You can see which prospects have viewed your firm’s profile, or check which leads are already in your CRM with the Advanced Plus plan. You’ll need to decide which filters are most relevant to the type of clients you’re hoping to connect with.

Use Spotlights

Spotlights allow you to leverage connections between prospects and members of your team or network. A spotlight will appear under leads that are connected to people you know. You can click the spotlight to request a warm introduction.

Save and Share Leads

Sales Navigator includes a built-in feature that allows you to save leads with the click of a button. You can save individual prospects and group them using metrics that make the most sense, based on your goals. Organizing leads is as simple as adding a tag or note, which you can make visible to everyone on your team.

Explore Shared Experiences

The Shared Experiences filter is included in Advanced Lead Search. This feature allows you to filter for prospects you have something in common with, such as sharing the same alma mater or a membership in a professional or social organization. 

Leverage InMail

Your Sales Navigator plan includes InMail credits, so you don’t want to let them go to waste. To make the most of them, LinkedIn recommends identifying the candidates who are most likely to respond and highlighting mutual connections. You can select premade templates and then personalize your messages.

Sales Navigator Compliance for Financial Advisors

Ensuring compliance with your marketing strategy is important, particularly when it comes to how you document client information, maintain records and implement cybersecurity protections. LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes this easier by partnering with several compliance software providers.

Using this type of technology allows you to market your business to prospective leads through the platform while supporting your recordkeeping and compliance review process. For example, you can use compliance software to:

• Capture and import data from the LinkedIn Sales Navigator application programming interface (API)
• Document messages, including all images or attachments, and seamlessly organize message threads
• Securely store and protect client information
• Monitor communications on and off the LinkedIn platform, and flag content that may be non-compliant
• Take remediation actions quickly when a compliance violation occurs

These types of tools can simplify the compliance workflow for you or your Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), if you employ one. You aren’t required to use one of LinkedIn’s software partners to use Sales Navigator, though doing so could help make compliance review and recordkeeping more manageable.

Other Sales Tools for Financial Advisors

While LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be a powerful tool for prospecting, financial advisors may consider supporting their sales efforts with additional platforms.

SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) can help advisors connect with prospective clients through lead generation and automated marketing. This subscription-based service can help advisors connect with prospective clients and then nurture those relationships with a suite of marketing tools. For example, AMP allows advisors to build custom, automated email and text campaigns for prospective clients who may require a longer sales process. AMP now features the ability to create and automate email newsletters on thousands of potential topics. Schedule a free demo to learn more.

Advisors may also look to CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot or Wealthbox, all of which integrate with SmartAsset AMP. By incorporating these tools alongside LinkedIn Sales Navigator, advisors can diversify their approach, strengthen client relationships, support follow-up and prospect engagement..

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Bottom Line

Sales Navigator may be worth considering for advisors who already use LinkedIn for prospecting or want more tools to support outreach. Requesting a demo or free trial is something you might consider if you’re ready to test the possibilities of scaling through the LinkedIn platform.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Social media is just one avenue you might pursue for lead generation. You might also invest more directly in your marketing and lead gen efforts. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• If you’re not ready to take the plunge with Sales Navigator, you can still leverage LinkedIn as a professional networking tool. You can also use it to establish and build your brand’s credibility by creating a detailed profile that’s optimized for search so it’s easy for prospective clients to find you.

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