How to Build a Sales Navigator Prospect List for Outreach

Step 1: Turn your ideal customer into filters

Write down three things: the company you sell to, the person who owns the problem, and where they're based. Then map each one to a Sales Navigator lead filter. Note that Geography is where the person lives; company headquarters location is a separate filter. This article is about deciding who belongs on the list; if you want the click-by-click build inside Sales Navigator, including plan limits and the result-count ceiling, follow setting up Sales Navigator filters for a first campaign.

Step 2: Write the job title search

The job title filter does most of the work, so write it carefully. Sales Navigator accepts Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks and brackets), which lets you catch the different ways people describe the same role. Our guide to Sales Navigator search filters goes deeper on Boolean syntax and which filters are worth combining. Start broad, look at the first page of results, and tighten from there. For the example above, the search would be:

• ("customer success" OR "client success" OR "customer experience") AND (head OR director OR VP OR "vice president")

Step 3: Remove poor fits and people you've already contacted

Use the Include and Exclude options to strip out patterns that keep showing up. Sales Navigator won't know about every conversation your team has had, so check your own records too. Common things to remove:

• **Consultants and advisers.** Add NOT (consultant OR advisor OR freelance) to the title search if they keep appearing. Check a few results afterwards to make sure you haven't removed real buyers.
• **People you've already talked to.** The People in CRM and People you interacted with filters cover leads you've saved, viewed or messaged. Also check your own records for active conversations and existing customers.
• **Filters that cut too much.** If a filter removes obvious buyers, loosen it and catch the difference during review instead.

Step 4: Review the list before using it

Open profiles from across the results, not just the first page. LinkedIn suggests checking a lead's role and company before saving them. If the same mismatch keeps appearing, fix the search rather than removing people one by one. For each person, ask:

• **Role:** do they own or influence the problem you solve?
• **Company:** is it the right market and size?
• **Reason to reach out:** is there something specific to say to them, beyond their job title?
• **Contact status:** are they already in a conversation with your team, or a customer?

Step 5: Save the search and use it

Saving a search keeps its filters and keywords, and new people who match will appear in it over time. That's useful, but it also means a saved search isn't a fixed, approved list, so repeat the review when you come back to it. If you need a fixed list, save individual people as leads instead.

In ZenMode, you can paste a Sales Navigator search URL straight into a new campaign, and ZenMode turns the results into LinkedIn profiles for outreach. Because the search can change, run it and review the results first, the same way you would for any other outreach.