LinkedIn Sales Navigator—AKA, the darling of the sales world, the supposed savior of prospecting, the tool that promises to make our lives easier and our pipelines fuller. But let's be real: it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
In fact, there are quite a few things about LinkedIn Sales Navigator that make us want to snatch ourselves bald. Don't get me wrong, it has its merits, but sometimes, it feels like the platform is more of a hindrance than a help. So, let's dive into the 7 things we absolutely despise about LinkedIn Sales Navigator and explore how we can navigate these frustrations to still make the most of this "essential" sales tool (hint: find the right browser extension).
What Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
For those of you who have been living under a rock, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium sales tool designed to help sales professionals target, understand, and engage with potential customers on LinkedIn. It's essentially a turbocharged version of LinkedIn, offering a range of features that promise to make prospecting and selling easier and more effective.
With Sales Navigator, you can access advanced search filters to find your ideal prospects, get real-time insights and alerts about your target accounts, and even use fancy tools like "TeamLink" to uncover hidden connections within your organization. It's like having a secret weapon in your sales arsenal—except sometimes that weapon misfires, leaving you frustrated and wondering why you bothered in the first place.
But hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Sales Navigator does have its perks, and when used alongside the right browser extensions, it can be a powerful tool for building relationships, generating leads, and ultimately, closing deals. Just don't expect it to be a magic wand that solves all your sales woes. Like any tool, it requires skill, strategy, and a healthy dose of patience to truly make it work for you.
7 Reasons We Hate (Ok, really dislike) LinkedIn Sales Navigator
1. The Price Tag
Let's start with the most obvious gripe—the cost. Sales Navigator isn't exactly a budget-friendly option, with plans starting at a whopping $100 per month, per person. You could probably hire an Upworker for less. 52% of users feel the cost is too high for the value provided, so you're not along if you're griping about the cost.
For many sales professionals and small businesses, that's a hefty chunk of change to invest in a tool that may or may not deliver the results you're hoping for. It's like paying for a five-star meal and ending up with a lukewarm burger and soggy fries. Not cool, LinkedIn.
As one Capterra reviewer points out:
SalesNavigator is not cheap, although one can argue that if you do get a couple deals out of it it will become worth it. If that's the case, fine. But I find there could be a better integration between SalesNavigator and your LinkedIn profile. You have the limitation of a few messages you can actually send per month, and plus it does require somebody to be managing it.
2. No List Exports
You know what's frustrating? Building a meticulously curated list of prospects on Sales Navigator, only to realize you can't export it. Doing anything in bulk is out of the question.
That's right, folks—you're essentially trapped within the platform, unable to take your hard-earned data with you. There’s been many times when I wanted to add my search results to as a to-do list or move it to another location to analyze but I can’t.
It's like being given a shiny new toy, but you're not allowed to play with it outside the sandbox.
The best thing to do here is find a browser extension that helps you get data out of Sales Navigator. Magical, for example, can export your search results or saved leads list to a sheet with one click.
As one Capterra reviewer, notes, there are not enough features:
They've taken away a feature that I found to be one of the most powerful features on any platform that has a lead search built in and that is the ability to find "lookalike" leads. You used to be able to find a lead and if that lead happened to be the perfect match to your ideal client you could find more people like that person with one click. It was amazing! But I havent been able to find the feature, it may still exist but when I contacted LinkedIn about this they were no help at all. Which brings me to my next point. - I've had several instances like the one mentioned above where I wanted to know how to do a specific task or had a question about a feature and every time I talked to an agent at LinkedIn it's like they had never even seen sales navigator before. Nearly every time I talked to them I had to educate them on the platform and then ask my question. It was nice how available they were to talk but I have not received any actual help from their support team at all. - The biggest issue for me and the main reason I no longer use sales navigator is LinkedIn is now full of spammers and just people sending out so many messages it has become far too crowded in terms of trying to connect with people to network and do business together. - I don't know of a way to pull an email address from leads in Sales Nav, I know you can on their profile but that information is rarely ever accurate. So I still have to use a third party app to try and get their contact into.
3. Impersonal InMails
InMails, the supposed saving grace of Sales Navigator, often feels about as personal as a mass email from your dentist. Sure, you can customize them to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, they still reek of insincerity. It's hard to build genuine connections when your messages have the stench of “they’re selling something”, which comes with the little InMail logo.
Instead of sending the nefarious InMail, open their regular LinkedIn profile and send a personalized DM. Supplement your workflow with a tool that can join you anywhere to automate and auto-personalize your LinkedIn sequences, like Magical. Using a personalized message in a DM is always going to have a higher open rate than an impersonal InMail.
As one Capterra reviewer points out:
There are a few things I don't like: 1. Even when someone is a second connection, I often can't see how I am connected to them - that's no help to me. 2. The filters Sales Nav has are relegated to LinkedIn fields, so filtered searches don't actually give me much more than I can do in the standard LI interface 3. You can't cross lead and account searches - to find, for example, the VP of HR in $500M+ US-based companies (which would be useful!) 4. It's reliant on your prospect being active/staying up to date on LinkedIn.
4. Email Invisibility
You know what would be really helpful? If Sales Navigator actually provided email addresses for your prospects. But alas, that's apparently too much to ask.
Instead, you're left playing a guessing game, hoping that your carefully crafted InMail will somehow magically land in their inbox. It's like trying to send a letter without an address—good luck with that.
If you open up Magical while you’re in LinkedIn, you can see a profile’s email address. Super cool if you ask us.
5. The Mystery of the Missing Phone Numbers
In the same vein as the email debacle, Sales Navigator seems to have an aversion to phone numbers. You can search high and low, but more often than not, you'll come up empty-handed. It's as if the platform is saying, "You want to actually talk to your prospects? Ha! Good one!"
And that's not the only place Sales Navigator falls short: 40% of users find the search filters inadequate and 25% of users report inaccurate data in profiles.
6. Salesforce Integration Woes
On paper, the Salesforce integration sounds like a dream come true. But in reality, it's often more of a nightmare. Syncing issues, data discrepancies, and general clunkiness plague the experience, leaving you wondering if it's even worth the hassle.
It's like trying to force a square peg into a round hole—it might work eventually, but it's not going to be pretty. If you use Magical, you can transfer your data with a few clicks.
7. Lackluster Customer Support
When things go wrong (and let's face it, they often do), you'd hope for a responsive and helpful customer support team to save the day. Unfortunately, Sales Navigator's support can be a bit hit-or-miss.
You might get lucky and find an agent who knows their stuff, or you might end up in an endless loop of generic responses and unresolved issues. It's like playing customer support roulette—you never know what you're going to get. 38% of users report frequent technical issues and 45% of users find the interface confusing, so there's no doubt it feels like banging your head against the wall when you just want to complete your propsecting tasks for the week.
And don’t just take our word for it. Listen to what their own customers are saying:
Should You Still Invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
We’ve said a lot about the (many) shortcomings of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. But is it still worth the investment? It’s still the leading tool for building a refined search for leads. There’s nothing better available.
It may be expensive and missing some key capabilities, but you can supplement those gaps when you combine LinkedIn Sales Navigator with a tool like Magical.
Magical can help you enrich the data you gather and extract it to the places where you need it most (your spreadsheet, CRM, etc.). In other words, Magical can help you get the most out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Ready To Make LinkedIn Sales Navigator More Magical?
So there you have it, folks—the 7 reasons why we're frenemies with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. But don't let this dissuade you from giving it a shot.
Despite its flaws, the platform can still be a valuable tool in your sales arsenal. As long as you combine it with Magical. Magical is used by over 650,000 people and more than 40,000 teams to save 7 hours a week on their repetitive tasks. Try it yourself today!
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