How to Leverage Sales Navigator Account Lists for Prospecting

There’s no shortage of sales tools out there — for lead generation, intent data, outreach, data enrichment, automation and more. 

But one of the most critical tools for SDRs on up to business owners is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Beyond the lead research and the social selling element, Sales Navigator is incredibly useful for building out robust campaigns for account-based opportunities. 

Using Sales Navigator to search for (and save) target accounts is a great way to build the foundation for your sales process. The insight and notifications you receive from taking the time to target accounts translates into account-based campaigns, ‘and and expand’ tactics, customer cross-selling and more. 

In this guide, we walk you through how to start building account lists in Sales Nav, the search filters you should be taking advantage of, and how to turn your account list into an enriched list of targeted prospects.

We address some of the most important questions for leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator account lists for prospecting: 

• How can you use Sales Navigator to research accounts?
• Which filters should I be using for account search?
• How can I export my list from Sales Navigator?
• Can I search for specific prospects and job profiles from my saved lists? 
• How can I extract emails from my account and prospect lists on Sales Navigator?

Sales Navigator Lists: What, How and Why

What are account lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator? 

Sales Navigator gives you the ability to create custom lists — a straightforward way to organize your sales prospecting process and keep track of both leads and accounts.

According to LinkedIn, customized lists on Sales Navigator let you:

• Filter lead search results by your saved accounts.
• Match leads and accounts within your customized lists.
• Share custom lists with your sales and marketing teams.
• Add notes to your account lists to organize your thought process

How do I create account lists on Sales Navigator?

First things first, you’ll need to sign up for Sales Navigator. It’s $79.99 per month, but you can start your first month with a free trial.

Once you sign up and login to your Sales Navigator account, enter your main keyword in the search bar on the homescreen. For example, if you’re selling into the HR space, enter “HR companies.”

On the search results page, click “Account results” to see companies instead of individual leads. 

From there, you can click the “Save” button on individual accounts or select multiple accounts and hit “Save to list” at the top of the results. If you don’t have existing account lists to choose from, you’ll need to name your new account list. 

Hint: If you want to go deep with your research, use the account filters to home in on the most promising target accounts. More on that below. 

Why use Sales Navigator account lists? 

First, you can build a solid foundation for your account-based and prospecting efforts with account search on Sales Navigator. By saving your filtered results to lists, you can focus on the companies that are most likely to buy your product or service. Armed with geographic, tech stack, and departmental information about companies, you can home in on the right people at the right time.

Second, LinkedIn makes it simple to keep your outbound efforts moving with Sales Navigator. When you set up lists, you’ll start getting updates from LinkedIn on the companies you save as accounts. These email updates include company news, lead updates, hiring, and more.

“Saving a company as an account allows you to see real-time insights such as lead recommendations, company-related updates, and company news right in your Sales Navigator homepage,” according to the LinkedIn page.

“For example, if a saved account has raised money in the past 12 months, it will appear on the lists page with a direct link to the associated news article.”

What is the Sales Navigator account list limit?

In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a maximum of 10,000 accounts can be saved. It’s important to keep track of the number of accounts in your list to ensure that you don’t exceed the limit. If you need to store more than 10,000 accounts, delete old unused lists to manage your accounts effectively.

Types of LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lists

Sales Navigator Lists offer valuable functionalities for sales professionals to effectively manage and prioritize their leads, contacts, and accounts. Here are some key features of Sales Navigator Lists:

1. Saved Leads: This category includes all the leads that you have saved in your custom lead lists.
2. Saved Accounts: It encompasses all the accounts you have saved in your custom account lists.
3. My CRM Leads and Contacts (auto-generated): This feature imports and saves leads and contacts from your CRM into Sales Navigator. You can view these leads and contacts when there is accurate and complete information in your CRM, and there is a match between Sales Navigator and your CRM.
4. My CRM Accounts (auto-generated): Similar to the previous feature, this functionality imports and saves accounts from your CRM to Sales Navigator. Your accounts will be visible when there is accurate and complete information in your CRM and a match with Sales Navigator.
5. Custom Lists: These lists enable you to organize and prioritize your leads and accounts based on your specific criteria.
6. Shared Lists: These are custom lists shared with you by others. You can easily copy and save them to keep track of your lead and account lists and collaborate with other users.
7. Recommended Leads: This list provides up to 100 recommended leads based on your past activity and buyer intent signals. It offers lead suggestions that you may have overlooked otherwise.
8. New Executives at Saved Accounts (auto-generated): This list highlights executives with Chief Experience Officer (CXO) and Vice President (VP) designations who have recently joined a new company in your saved accounts within the past three months. The list is refreshed on a weekly basis.
9. Recently Accepted Connections and InMails (auto-generated): This list features warm leads that you can follow up with. It includes individuals who have accepted your connection requests or have accepted or responded to your InMails in the last 30 days through Sales Navigator or LinkedIn. The list is refreshed daily.

With these diverse features, Sales Navigator Lists empower sales professionals to effectively manage their leads and accounts, enhance their workflow, and engage with potential and existing clients.

Account Filters to Build Better Lists on Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has 13 account filters you can use to home in on the right accounts, on top of the keywords you use initially. 

You won’t necessarily use all the filters all at once, but they will help you create more targeted lists depending on how you segment your accounts and prospects’ profiles.  

• Geography: Use a specific country, region, postal code or city to narrow down your results. If you’re building out TAM or moving into greenfield territory, this filter will be critical. 
• Industry: If you sell into a specific industry (or industries), select one or multiple options here to see only the most relevant company results. This is from a predefined list, but the options span everything from accounting to restaurants to computer software. 
• Department headcount: Selling to a specific department with an established budget? Choose from more than 25 departments, and manually enter the department size you’re looking for.  
• Department headcount growth: Get even more granular (and hone your message to be even more relevant) by looking at department headcount growth. Selling a sales tool? Look for a growing sales department. Automating processes? Look for a shrinking HR or marketing department. 
• Annual revenue: Target accounts that fit your ICP and contract value with a specific range. From $1M on up to unicorn status. 
• Company headcount: This one’s as straightforward as it gets. Sales Navigator has 8 company size bands, from tiny (1-10 employees) on up to 10,000+ employees. 
• Company headcount growth: Find new opportunities by looking into how fast a company is growing or shrinking its workforce. 
• Fortune: Targeting F50 or just those toward the bottom of the list? This filter will tell you exactly where companies stand. 
• Number of followers: Look at — and speak to — how popular a company is on LinkedIn by filtering by the number of followers the company LinkedIn page has. This ranges from 1-50 to more than 5,000 followers. 
• Technologies used: Talk about some keen insight. With this filter, you can either look at the type of technology a company uses (i.e. a Content Delivery Network) or specific tools that they leverage (i.e. HubSpot). 
• Job opportunities: Is the company hiring? This filter will give you a simple yes or no — at least if they’re hiring on LinkedIn. 
• Relationship: Quickly see if you have any 1st degree connections working at the accounts you’re targeting in your search. If so, we recommend saving them to a separate list to keep that clear in your outreach. 
• Tags: This filter is based on previous searches and lists that you’ve built. As you prospect, you can tag accounts and leads with keywords you want to remember Later, you can filter search results for these key terms.

How to Export Sales Navigator Account Lists?

Since LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to export much (except for your connections), getting your account list off of LinkedIn isn’t as simple as hitting ‘export list’. Not quite — but close. 

At the end of the day, your account list will help you drive an effective outreach strategy, set up account-based campaigns, and more. But to make contact, you’re going to have to first zero in on the contacts within those target accounts. 

Here’s how. 

Step 1: Build your account list 

Use your keywords—and the filters outlined above—to create targeted account lists. These could be by stage, by geography, by company size and so on. 

Step 2: Use ‘Custom List’ in search 

Once you have your target account list built, switch over the Lead results tab on search. Instead of entering a keyword or separate filters, just select your account list from the ‘Custom List’ option at the top of the filters column.

Presto. You’ll see a complete list of all the leads that work at the accounts on the list you selected. From there, you can narrow down your search results further. Use the lead filters (like role, department, and title) to focus on the prospects you want to reach within your target accounts. 

Step 3: Use Wiza to export the account list

When you have your account-based search ready, it’s time to leverage Wiza to pull these contacts off LinkedIn. 

Start by signing up for Wiza and installing the Chrome extension. 

Then you’ll be able to hit the “Export emails with Wiza” button. On the pop up, you’ll be able to select all the data you want — company information, emails, phone numbers, and more. 

If you want to focus on accounts, start with the filters and tips in this post, then move into exporting with Wiza. 

You’re ready to go!

Want to export leads instead? We have our guide for how to export leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Pull out your most promising leads and accounts, but you can keep the ball rolling, too. Sales Navigator will send you company updates, lead suggestions, job changes and more. Save searches  and use account lists generously — you’ll get some good momentum with prospecting. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: How can you use Sales Navigator to research accounts?

A: Sales Navigator allows you to create custom lists to organize your sales prospecting process and keep track of both leads and accounts. You can filter lead search results, match leads and accounts, share custom lists, and add notes to your account lists.

Q: Which filters should I be using for account search?

A: LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers 13 account filters, including Geography, Industry, Department headcount, Annual revenue, Company headcount, Technologies used, Job opportunities, Relationship, and Tags.

Q: How can I export my list from Sales Navigator?

A: You can build your account list, use the ‘Custom List’ option in search, and then leverage Wiza to export the account list. Wiza allows you to export company information, industry, headcount, revenue, social media profiles, and more.

Q: Can I search for specific prospects and job profiles from my saved lists?

A: Yes, you can narrow down your search results by using lead filters like role, department, and title to focus on the prospects you want to reach within your target accounts.

Q: How can I get emails from lead lists on Sales Navigator?

A: You can use Wiza to enrich leads with verified emails. By signing up for Wiza and installing the Chrome extension, you can easily export emails and other data.

Q: What are account lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

A: Account lists in Sales Navigator are custom lists that help you organize your sales prospecting process. They allow you to filter search results, match leads and accounts, share lists, and add notes.

Q: How do I create account lists on Sales Navigator?

A: You can create account lists by signing up for Sales Navigator, entering your main keyword in the search bar, clicking “Account results,” and then saving individual accounts or multiple accounts to a list.

Q: Why use Sales Navigator account lists?

A: Sales Navigator account lists help you build a solid foundation for account-based and prospecting efforts, focus on relevant companies, and receive real-time insights and updates from LinkedIn.

Q: What is the Sales Navigator account list limit?

A: In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a maximum of 10,000 accounts can be saved. You must manage your lists effectively to avoid exceeding this limit.

Q: What are the types of LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lists?

A: Sales Navigator Lists include Saved Leads, Saved Accounts, My CRM Leads and Contacts, My CRM Accounts, Custom Lists, Shared Lists, Recommended Leads, New Executives at Saved Accounts, and Recently Accepted Connections and InMails.

Q: How to Export Sales Navigator Account Lists?

A: You can export Sales Navigator Account Lists by building your list, using the ‘Custom List’ option in search, and leveraging Wiza to export the list with the desired data.