How 'Personas' in Sales Navigator Helps Me Connect With the People Who Matter Most

Sales Navigator is one of the most powerful sales tools in the market right now and the best part is that it keeps getting better and better. I’ve been using it for years now and it helped me take my sales and social selling game to the next level. Recently new features including Account IQ and Personas were introduced and they’re making a huge impact on how salespeople can find the best prospects and create better conversations. 

Today I want to share some of my biggest strategies for leveraging Sales Navigator's new Persona’s feature to unlock more sales conversations.

Personas is there to help you find your target buyer and decision maker within an organisation a lot more efficiently. Sales Navigator provides you with 2 pre-set Personas “CXO” and “Director ” although you can completely change and customize these. It also allows you to create a further 3 more Personas, so a total of 5. 

This is where my first big strategy comes in on using Personas to hone in on your ideal prospects, create multi-threading opportunities and gain the perfect conversation starting insights…

First, get clear on your Ideal Client Persona.

Many sellers have a basic understanding of who their ideal customer persona is, but some still have no idea, and some could definitely dig a lot deeper and narrow down even more. Understanding who really is your target buyer is a huge key to unlocking many of the amazing features of Sales Navigator, but certainly most importantly the Personas feature. 

For example, one of my sales jobs during my corporate selling career was selling a software product to IT teams. After a couple of months, I soon found that one of the quickest converting personas of mine was an IT Director of an education facility such as a school, college or university. 

Out of all of my target customers, this particular persona had the shortest sales cycle and highest conversion rate. Now unfortunately I didn’t have Personas back then! But this is how I would have used it then and how I use it now, to focus on my key target customers. 

ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Sit down and start writing who some of your target customers are, mapping out key words such as function, seniority level, job title and geography (clue, these are the filters that you’ll fill in when creating a Persona on Sales Navigator). If you’re not sure, why not ask a more experienced sales professional in your team, or one of your managers.  

How to save time with Personas.

Once you’ve created however many Personas that you feel you need on Sales Navigator, the next step is to start using them! 

You’re able to now filter searches with your Personas streamlining the search process and allowing you to dig deeper into finding the most perfect and ideal prospects.

When you’re searching for target companies and find one of interest, as soon as you click into that company on Sales Navigator and scroll down, you’ll see the Relationship Explorer bar now showing the option to find everyone that meets your persona criteria.

You’ll see the option to choose which Persona that you want, and Sales Navigator will update the results accordingly. This is where the time saving really comes into play. 

Instead of having to spend time searching or filtering to try and find your target decision makers, they’re right there! Not only can you then save them directly to your saved lists (or create a new list for them), but as soon as you do save them, they’ll appear directly below in the Relationship Map ready for you to add them.  

All of this done in just a couple of clicks is an incredible time saver and can help you target the right people instantly.  

How Personas makes multithreading easier.

Not only can you save time finding the right people, but you can also make multi-threading a lot easier. You’ll see in your results all of the people that fit your persona, but you’ll also have 2 more opportunities here. 

Firstly, you’ll be able to find other stakeholders within that specific department that are relevant. For example, if I’m selling to a VP of Sales or a CSO, then chances are the Director of Sales and even the Sales Manager will be involved in the buying process.

Secondly, if you’re able to allocate some of your persona profiles on Sales Navigator to other key decision makers, then you’ll be able to multi-thread even more efficiently. 

For example, the CFO is likely to be involved in most B2B decisions, and so creating a CFO persona will help you find them quicker, add them to your Relationship Map quicker and include them in your sales and social selling process a lot more effectively. 

Learn more about your Ideal Client Persona under Growth Insights.

Saving time finding the right people is going to help so many sellers, but it doesn’t stop there. If you scroll down on Sales Navigator, you’ll find the Growth Insights section which you can now also filter by Personas. 

You’re able to directly see the Persona Growth over the last 3 months and better yet click directly into a list of your target personas. 

It’s with this information, and the information and insights you’ll get from all of the persona profiles that you add to a list, that you’ll be able to send more personalized and relevant messages to start conversations with your prospects.  

For example:

• “Hi Sarah, your team has grown a lot in the last 3-months and with 15 new people joining I wanted to see whether they might benefit from LinkedIn & Sales Navigator training?”
• “Hi Michael, I’ve been working with a lot of VPs of Sales recently in the London area, including John Smith the VP of Sales over at Amazon. I wanted to pop you a quick message to see if we might be able to help you…” 

With Personas on Sales Navigator, you’re able to find the most relevant people, a lot quicker, and multi-thread with ease as well as finding key insights to help start even better conversations. 

Get more out of Personas by using these other Sales Navigator features with it.

My final big strategy with Personas is utilizing it with some of the other amazing Sales Navigator features including:

1. Lead Lists – Saving your Persona’s into target-built lead lists will allow you to manage and prospect more effectively. You can also create account lists that include all relevant decision makers and stakeholders likely to be involved. 
2. Relationship Maps – As you find and save your target decision makers from the Persona bar, you can then add them to the Relationship Map as a decision maker, champion, evaluator, procurement or influencer. 
3. Account IQ – This is one of the biggest new features that Sales Navigator has launched and will help you find some of the best insights and information on your target prospects to help you find buyer intent as well as content to help personalize your messages. 
4. Insights – In your lists you’ll be able to see amazing insights such as who has posted on LinkedIn in the past 30-days, who is new in role in the past 90-days, who follows your company, who has a TeamLink intro and so much more. 
5. InMail’s – You can then use all of this information to send better personalized InMail’s that are relevant to them, and so more likely to generate a reply and start a conversation. 

I hope this helps you and your teams unlock more from Sales Navigator with this incredible new feature. 

Get more out of Sales Navigator by reading these posts:

• 'Who’s Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile' — How to Use This Feature to Find New Clients
• Searching in Sales Navigator? These Filters Can Help You Find the People Who Matter Most.
• Sales Navigator Alerts: What They Are and How to Best Use Them
• How to Be Great at Reaching Out: What Every InMail Sent in 2022 Told Us
• Meet Account IQ: Our One-Stop Shop For Account Research
• What is Relationship Explorer And Why LinkedIn's Sellers Are Excited About It
  

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