How to Set Up Sales Navigator Filters for Your First Outreach Campaign

Sales Navigator groups its lead filters under seven headings — Company, Role, Personal, Buyer Intent, Best Path In, Recent Updates and Workflow — and a first campaign only needs about six filters across three of them, per LinkedIn's lead and account filter definitions. The build is: sign in, click Lead filters on the homepage, narrow until the result count is workable — you can view up to 2,500 lead results across 100 pages, so anything above that is a search you have not finished building — then turn on the Save search to get notified of new results toggle and save the people into a lead list. This is that build, in order.

For the wider tour of what each filter is for, our practical guide to Sales Navigator search filters covers the concepts. This post is the button-by-button version.

Before you start: the plan you are on

The current plans are Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus. On LinkedIn's Compare Pricing and Plans page, Core is US$119.99 a month or US$1,079.88 a year and Advanced is US$159.99 a month or US$1,799.88 a year; Advanced Plus has no public figure, only "pricing is customized based on your sales team's size". All three include 50 InMails a month.

Almost every filter a first campaign needs works without upgrading. The exceptions are the team and CRM ones: TeamLink connections of is not available on Core, People in CRM is listed as Advanced Plus only, and Viewed your Company Page recently carries an "(Advanced and Advanced Plus only)" note. Buyer-intent signals are presented as an Advanced-tier feature on the pricing page, so we would not build a first campaign around them. Still deciding whether to subscribe at all? We compared the tiers in Sales Navigator versus Premium for outreach.

Step 1: Sign in and open Lead filters

1. Sign in to Sales Navigator.
2. From the homepage, click Lead filters or Account filters, or enter specific leads or accounts into the search bar box and press Enter.

Take Lead filters: account search returns companies, not people.

Step 2: Narrow in this order

Each filter shrinks the pool the next one works on, so add them one at a time.

1. Geography — LinkedIn describes this as region or postal code. Usually the biggest cut, so set it first.
2. Industry — also in the Personal group.
3. Company headcount — in the Company group. The filter people usually call company size.
4. Function — in the Role group. The broad function, not the job title.
5. Current job title — the specific title, still in Role.
6. Seniority level — last, so you are not filtering seniority across a pool that is still too broad.

Each filter carries Include or Exclude options: click those to refine the results for that specific filter. Exclude is the underused half — knocking out a title is often faster than describing the pool you want.

Sales Navigator also suggests filters as you go. For leads those are limited to Current company, Geography, Seniority level, and Function — shortcuts to filters you were adding anyway, not extra targeting.

Step 3: Write the Boolean string

Boolean works in more than one field. LinkedIn documents it for the Company, title, and keyword field, with a limit of about 15 search operators.

• Write AND, OR and NOT in uppercase.
• Use quotation marks for an exact phrase.
• Use parentheses to group terms.
• The + and - operators are not officially supported by LinkedIn, so do not build a string around them.

A first campaign rarely needs anything clever: VP NOT (assistant OR SVP) in the title field removes the two shapes that pollute most VP searches.

Step 4: Add one timing filter

Two filters in the Recent Updates group turn a static list into a reason to reach out this week:

• Changed jobs — people who changed jobs in the last 90 days.
• Posted on LinkedIn — people who posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days.

If an older guide told you to open "Spotlights" for these, that grouping has moved: on the current filter definitions page the signals sit under Recent Updates, Best Path In and Buyer Intent.

Best Path In is the other group worth a look — Connections of, Past customer, Past colleague, Shared experiences, TeamLink connections of. A warm path costs nothing to filter on.

Step 5: Check the count against the ceiling

You can view up to 2,500 lead results across 100 pages. That is a hard ceiling on what you can page through, so a search returning "10,000+" is not a big audience — it is an unfinished one.

Once the search is right, click the Pin icon to maintain your specific search criteria for future searches.

Step 6: Save the search

Turn on the Save search to get notified of new results toggle near the top. You get a total of 50 lead searches and 50 account searches — generous, not unlimited, so name them properly now.

New matches are emailed to your account address and appear on the Sales Navigator homepage in the All alerts tab. Bookmarked alerts are saved for 60 days from the date of bookmarking.

Step 7: Save the leads to a list

1. Click Save beside an individual lead, or
2. tick the checkbox above the results and click Save to list to save up to 25 leads at once.

You can save up to 1,000 leads in each list and 10,000 total leads. Saving a lead also auto-saves its company as an account, so a sloppy first list quietly fills your account lists too. Working with colleagues? Click Share search in the lower-right corner of the page.

Getting the list out of Sales Navigator

Here is the part most tutorials skip: there is no native CSV export of lead search results. We could not find a LinkedIn page documenting one — CSV upload for account matching is documented, but that is the opposite direction. The saved lead list is the deliverable, not a spreadsheet.

From there it is pacing rather than targeting. A fresh list does not change LinkedIn's invitation limits, and a new account still needs a proper warm-up before outreach however good the filters are. If you plan to work the list with a tool rather than by hand, we covered that in Sales Navigator automation.

What LinkedIn does not document

Several widely repeated claims are not LinkedIn's:

• A native CSV export of lead search results. Not documented on any LinkedIn page we checked.
• Daily view or connection limits for Sales Navigator. No official numbers located.
• "Metro area" as a Geography option. LinkedIn defines Geography as region or postal code.
• Company headcount bracket boundaries. Not confirmed by a LinkedIn source.
• Why the 2,500-result cap exists. LinkedIn attributes it to network accuracy; the "to prevent scraping" explanation is third-party.
• Whether alerts, buyer-intent filters and TeamLink are tier-gated, and at which tier. LinkedIn's own pages disagree, so we have quoted what each page states rather than picking a side.

FAQ

How many searches can I save in Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn's saved-search documentation gives a total of 50 lead searches and 50 account searches. Saving is one control — the Save search to get notified of new results toggle near the top of the results page. New matches then arrive by email and in the All alerts tab on the homepage.

How many leads can I save to a lead list?

Up to 1,000 leads in each list and 10,000 in total. From the results you can bulk-save up to 25 at once with Save to list, or click Save on an individual lead. Saving a lead also auto-saves that person's company as an account.

Do I need Sales Navigator Advanced for a first campaign?

Not for the filters in this walkthrough — Geography, Industry, Company headcount, Function, Current job title, Seniority level, Changed jobs and Posted on LinkedIn are all listed as plain Sales Navigator lead filters. What you would miss on Core are the team and CRM ones: TeamLink connections of, People in CRM (listed as Advanced Plus only) and Viewed your Company Page recently (marked "Advanced and Advanced Plus only").

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