Sales Navigator Search Filters: The Ultimate Guide (2025)

For finding prospects and accounts, LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides more than 30 search options. The Basic search on LinkedIn only has 18 filters.

Without a doubt, Sales Navigator is the best tool for quickly locating potential clients. It won't take long once you learn how to use search criteria before you start setting up dozens of appointments with eligible leads.

Did you know that Sales Navigator users experience an average of 20% increase in sales opportunities? (Source: LinkedIn internal data). This highlights the power of targeted search and connection. To maximize your results, focus on defining your ideal customer profile and using the appropriate filters to find them.

Navigating the world of online sales can be challenging, but tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator can make it easier. A common misspelling, Sales Naviagtor, still refers to the same powerful platform designed to help sales professionals find and connect with potential customers. Whether you spell it correctly or not, understanding how to use the search filters within Sales Naviagtor is essential. These filters allow you to narrow down your search to find the most relevant leads for your business. By using the filters effectively, you can save time and focus your efforts on the prospects most likely to convert into customers.

This post includes all the information you require about LinkedIn Sales Navigator advanced search, among other things.

Before diving into the filters, it's crucial to understand the difference between LinkedIn's basic search and Sales Navigator advanced search. The basic search offers limited filters, making it challenging to pinpoint specific leads. Sales Navigator, on the other hand, provides a granular level of control, allowing you to target prospects based on a multitude of criteria. This precision is essential for effective lead generation and ultimately, driving sales.

While LinkedIn offers a basic search function, the advanced search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator unlocks a significantly more powerful and precise way to identify leads and accounts. The standard LinkedIn search is limited in its filtering capabilities, whereas Sales Navigator provides a wealth of options, as detailed in this article. Utilizing the advanced search on LinkedIn allows you to pinpoint ideal prospects based on criteria such as company size, job title, industry, and more. This targeted approach saves time and resources by focusing your efforts on the most promising leads. Mastering the advanced search on LinkedIn through Sales Navigator is crucial for effective lead generation and business development.

Let's begin straight away.

Mastering navigator sales techniques requires a deep understanding of its functionalities. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is more than just a search tool; it's a comprehensive platform designed to enhance your sales process. By leveraging its advanced filters and search capabilities, sales professionals can identify and connect with potential leads more effectively. This, in turn, leads to higher conversion rates and a more streamlined sales pipeline. Optimizing your use of navigator sales tools involves consistent practice and a strategic approach to targeting the right prospects. Remember to track your progress and adjust your strategies based on the results you're seeing.

A key aspect of mastering navigator sales is understanding the importance of continuous learning and adaptation. LinkedIn regularly updates Sales Navigator with new features and functionalities. Staying informed about these updates and incorporating them into your sales strategy is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. Consider subscribing to relevant industry blogs and attending webinars to stay up-to-date on the latest Sales Navigator best practices.

How Do I Find Leads Using The LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Filters?

Sales Navigator has 20 filters for finding leads:

1. Company headcount
2. Current & Past Company
3. Company Type
4. Company headquarters
5. Function
6. Job Title
7. Seniority Level
8. Year in Current Company Or Position
9. Spotlights
10. Posted Content
11. Connection
12. Geography
13. Industry
14. Year of experience
15. Connection Of
16. Groups
17. First Name and Last Name
18. Profile Language
19. Teamlink connections of
20. School

1. Company Headcount

This filter will assist you in compiling a list of leads from people working in companies of a specific size. 

Be careful that his filter considers the manually entered information on organizations' company pages rather than the actual number of employees listed on LinkedIn. 

If the business neglects to update it as it expands, these two numbers may diverge. To ensure that the 2 numbers match, double-check your lead lists.

Additionally, the LinkedIn count will only be significant if the majority of employees are members. If you were looking for construction companies, for example, you wouldn't necessarily find most of the personnel on LinkedIn. For businesses that are not digital, you should not rely on the LinkedIn count.

2. Current & Past Company

You can use this filter to find persons who are employed by or have previously worked for particular businesses.

Additionally, you may combine these 2 filters to hunt for former employees of one company working for another. People who formerly worked at Google but are now employed by Microsoft, for instance.

3. Company Type

You may use this filter to sort businesses according to their type. Naturally, the majority of you will seek privately held businesses, but some of you may be drawn to other kinds.

4. Company Headquarters

You can use this filter to find individuals who are employed by businesses with headquarters in a particular nation, area, or city.

You are not focusing on the location of your leads here, but rather on the location of their company.

5. Job Title

All of your prospects' recent experiences will be examined via the job title filter.

When you utilize the job title filter, LinkedIn searches all job experiences that are designated as "Present."

The problem is that many individuals neglect to accurately update their employment position when they move jobs. The prior experience, which is still listed as existing, isn't closed; instead, they establish a new one.

Even if you submit the correct job titles in your search, you may see inappropriate leads due to LinkedIn's "multiple current experience problem."

6. Function

LinkedIn uses an algorithm to infer people's functions based on their job titles. We do not advocate using this filter because it is untrustworthy.

On your leads' profiles, LinkedIn creates a Function for each available job post.

Here, you can see that these people have recent experiences in the field of Marketing. Due to the confusion this causes, you can end up including unqualified leads in your search results.

7. Seniority Level

LinkedIn uses an algorithm to determine the seniority levels of your leads based on their job titles and other details. We advise against using it.

For each current experience on your profile, LinkedIn will assign a Seniority Level. Therefore, if you have four open experiences, your profile will have four separate Seniority Levels associated with it. 

This is the reason why we advise against using this filter if you are certain of the job title you wish to target. And besides, if you already know what job titles you want to target, this filter is unnecessary.

8. Year In Current Company Or Position

Such filter can be beneficial if you want to monitor: 

• CEOs who are just starting out in their start-ups and may be receptive to trying out new services or products

• Targeting businesses that have the money to compensate you when they begin their company

9. Spotlights

There are six spotlight filters available:

1. Changed Job in the past 90 days
2. Mentioned in the news in the last 30 days
3. Posted on Linkedin in the last 30
4. Have shared experience with you
5. Following your company
6. Teamlink Intro

All of these provide excellent icebreakers for your LinkedIn prospecting communications.

You can use such details to customize your message to this audience and boost your response rate.

• a job change 

• a news item 

• a LinkedIn post 

• a shared experience 

• a shared connection

10. Posted Content

With the use of this filter, you may focus on users who recently wrote a LinkedIn article or post that contained a particular keyword.

In this approach, you may reference the material they post in your outreach letter as an icebreaker to significantly raise the response rate.

11. Connections

You can use this filter to sort your lead list according to how closely connected each one is to you.

Since you want to contact people you are not yet connected to on LinkedIn, it is evident that you should choose 2nd and 3rd-degree connections.

12. Geography

Using this filter, you may focus your leads according to where they are. And it is not about the company’s location. 

In actuality, you will choose your targets depending on the location they provide here.

13. Industry

You can use this filter to separate leads based on the industry that each lead has chosen for their profile, rather than the industry that their company is in.

14. Year of experience

If you target people who change companies often (like freelancers, cooks, or waiters) this filter can be useful to target people with a lot of experience in one field, even though they can company regularly.

15. Connections of

You can use this filter to focus on all of the relationships you share with first-degree connections.

16. Groups

You can use this filter to find persons who belong to particular groups.

The idea of interested-based targeting is intriguing. For instance, you may send prospecting messages to the entire membership of a group and say that they are a part of it.

17. First Name & Last Name

Identify people by their names. Not really helpful, unless you want to get in touch with every Peter on the planet.

18. Profile Language

When using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the LinkedIn filter English can be a powerful tool for refining your search. While many users default to English as their primary language on LinkedIn, this filter ensures you're connecting with individuals who actively use English in their profiles and content. This can be particularly useful if you're targeting specific regions or industries where English proficiency is a key indicator of a good prospect. However, it's crucial to use this filter judiciously. Over-reliance on the LinkedIn filter English may inadvertently exclude qualified leads who, while fluent in other languages, also maintain an active English-language presence on the platform. Balance is key to maximizing your reach and effectiveness.

Using this filter, you can find individuals based on the predominant language used in their LinkedIn profiles.

Since so many people choose English as their first language, even if they speak another, use this filter carefully.

19. Teamlink Connections Of

The Sales Navigator Advanced (formerly known as Team) tool on LinkedIn gives you access to your coworkers' entire network (1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections).

Teamlink is particularly useful for identifying warm leads within your company's network. According to a recent study, leads generated through employee referrals have a 30% higher conversion rate compared to leads from other sources (Source: Influitive). Encourage your team to actively share their connections and leverage Teamlink to tap into these valuable relationships.

If you have a Sales Navigator Advanced account, this filter makes it simple to look up your coworkers' relationships.

20. School

Looking to connect with your alumni or hire students from the top universities in your nation? That demand is perfectly met by the School filter.

Now that the lead search filters have been discussed in detail. The account search filters will now be discussed. How To LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Filters To Find Accounts?

To search accounts, Sales Navigator offers 13 filters:

1. Annual Revenue
2. Company Headcount
3. Company Headcount Growth
4. Headquarter Location
5. Industry
6. Number of followers
7. Department Headcount
8. Department Headcount Growth
9. Fortune
10. Technologies Used
11. Job Opportunities
12. Recent Leaderships Changes
13. Funding Event

1. Annual Revenue

With the use of this filter, you may narrow down accounts based on LinkedIn's estimate of their yearly revenue. When doing that, they use:

• - Information from the web
• - Extrapolations from LinkedIn data
• - This is not consistently accurate

2. Company Headcount

Similar to the lead search, you may filter businesses depending on how many people work there.

3. Company Headcount Growth

This filter is quite helpful for locating and expanding healthy businesses. You may, for instance, focus on businesses that experienced at least 10% annual growth. Remember that this growth is calculated on the headcount, not the revenue.

4. Headquarters Location

Using this filter, you can choose which businesses to target based on where their corporate offices are.

5. Industry

Using this filter, you can choose accounts depending on the industry that person has chosen for their company page.

6. Number of Followers

You can use this filter to find businesses based on how many followers they have.

I can only imagine this one being useful for companies with at least 100 followers. That could indicate that they have a legitimate business. People without the resources to pay you may run company pages with more than 100 followers.

7. Department Headcount

This filter is quite helpful if you offer goods or services that are aimed toward particular business divisions like accounting, sales, or engineering.

You may use it, for instance, to target businesses that have at least 5 sellers on their sales team.

8. Department Headcount Growth

Similar to Headcount Growth, it is possible to identify if a certain department within a company is expanding rapidly.

9. Fortune

This filter makes it simple to find Fortune 500 firms.

10. Technologies Used

This filter is an excellent idea, yet it is ineffective. LinkedIn's documentation contains no information regarding how they discover technology employed by businesses.

When I use What's Run, a trusted plugin for detecting technologies used on a website, it does not identify Webflow. According to the technology they employed, you wish to target particular businesses. It is far preferable to use services designed specifically for this purpose, such as Wappalyzer or BuiltWith.

This example is about researching ecommerce using Shopify, but this strategy may be applied to any technology.

11. Job Opportunities

This filter is also useful for determining whether a company is expanding. If a company is recruiting, it suggests that it is in good financial health and can afford to pay you.

This criterion will display all organizations that have at least one job posting on LinkedIn Jobs.

12. Recent Leadership Changes

Introducing your product or service to a new senior executive at a firm is a terrific idea. Undoubtedly, newbies enjoy trying new things and putting their ideas into practice.

With the help of this filter, you can quickly determine which businesses recently had top-level management changes and even locate newly hired decision-makers.

13. Funding Event

When a business raises capital, it signals that it is prepared to spend money. Is it better to spend money on your good or service?

By searching the web, LinkedIn locates businesses seeking funding. Every time they locate a fundraising-related article, they add it to the list and provide you with a link to the piece.

By sending these pieces to your prospects and congratulating them on the fundraising, you may utilize them as icebreakers.

To truly master the art of Sales Navigator, consider exploring resources like a navigator academy, whether formal or informal. These resources can provide structured training on leveraging the platform's features, including advanced search techniques, lead management strategies, and effective outreach methods. Investing in your Sales Navigator skills can significantly boost your lead generation efforts and improve your overall sales performance. A navigator academy can help you understand the nuances of each filter, how to combine them effectively, and how to interpret the search results to identify the most qualified prospects. Many online courses and tutorials can act as a navigator academy, offering step-by-step guidance and practical tips for maximizing your ROI.

5 Sales Navigator Advanced Search Filters Pro Tips

Five expert suggestions for mastering Sales Navigator search filters:

1. Employ boolean searching

2. Make use of bookmarks

3. Utilize blacklists

4. Execute searches based on accounts

5. Generate account lists by CSV upload

1. Employ boolean searching

Boolean search in Sales Navigator uses a very basic programming language to enhance the precision of your searches.

To truly maximize your lead generation efforts within Sales Navigator, consider mastering boolean search techniques. This powerful method allows you to combine keywords and operators (AND, OR, NOT) to refine your searches and pinpoint the most relevant prospects. For instance, you could search for "Marketing Manager AND SaaS NOT 'entry level'" to find experienced marketing managers in the SaaS industry, excluding those with entry-level positions. Effective use of boolean search can significantly reduce irrelevant results and save you valuable time. Experiment with different combinations of keywords and operators to discover the most effective strategies for your specific target audience. Understanding boolian search will dramatically improve the quality of leads you find.

It functions by utilizing both logical connective and punctuation:

1. AND
2. OR
3. NOT
4. Parentheses
5. Quotes

2. Make use of bookmarks

You can receive notifications when new people match your search results by using the Save Search option. It is an excellent approach to finding new chances and connecting with people as soon as they start working in their new roles. You can see the list of leads that most recently matched your search filters by clicking on the New link.

It is quite easy to save a search. Simply select the "Save Search" button in the upper right corner of the search window.

3. Utilize blacklists

Using Sales Navigator, follow these steps to locate decision-makers inside an account list:

1. Conduct a lead search
2. Navigate to Workflow
3. Select the Account List filter
4. Choose your account list

All of the employees of these firms will show up in the search results once you've chosen your account list.

Now it's up to you to create filters to find the appropriate decision-makers. The job title filter is a terrific tool for doing that, of course.

Congratulations, you have located the relevant decision makers within your account lists in just two clicks.

4. Execute searches based on accounts

To avoid contacting your competitors and former or present clients when prospecting, be sure to stay away from them.

For that look for your clients and rivals, then include them in a list of accounts.

Then, when you're looking for leads, do the following:

• Navigate to Workflow 

• Choose the blacklist 

• Select Exclude

The whole workforce of the businesses listed in your account will be shut out.

5. Generate account lists by CSV upload

If you use data sources other than LinkedIn to identify accounts, this capability can be extremely useful.

Profile upload allows you to import a CSV file containing account details so that LinkedIn can try to find these accounts in its database.

This approach will help you automate account list creation and identify decision makers within firms you've scraped:

• Crunchbase 

• Google 

• Madyness 

• Job boards

The match percentage will be 100% if you can get the LinkedIn URL for each user's corporate account!

If you want to export data from filtered Sales Navigator results use Linkedin Sales Navigator scraper Scrupp.

For efficient data extraction from Sales Navigator, consider using Scrupp, a powerful Sales Navigator scraper. Scrupp helps you extract valuable profile and company information, including verified email addresses, streamlining your networking, sales, and marketing efforts. It integrates seamlessly with LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, offering comprehensive data insights and CSV enrichment capabilities.

While LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers robust search capabilities, some users may seek alternative tools like RocketReach to supplement their lead generation efforts. RocketReach, like Scrupp, provides access to a vast database of professional contacts and verified email addresses, potentially expanding your reach beyond the LinkedIn network. However, it's essential to consider the specific features and pricing models of each tool to determine the best fit for your needs. Integrating data from multiple sources, including LinkedIn Sales Navigator and RocketReach, can provide a more comprehensive view of your target market and enhance your prospecting strategies. Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations when utilizing any third-party lead generation tool.

linkedin.com Sales Navigator is a subscription-based tool designed to help sales professionals find and connect with potential customers. It offers a range of features that go beyond the capabilities of a standard LinkedIn account. By using linkedin.com Sales Navigator, users can access advanced search filters, lead recommendations, and insights into their target accounts. The platform also provides tools for tracking leads, engaging with prospects, and building relationships. Investing in linkedin.com Sales Navigator can significantly improve your sales prospecting efforts and help you generate more qualified leads. It's a valuable resource for anyone looking to expand their network and drive revenue growth.

To further enhance your lead generation process, consider using Scrupp to enrich your existing data. Scrupp supports CSV enrichment, allowing you to upload your existing contact lists and append valuable data points, such as verified email addresses and company information. This can significantly improve the accuracy and completeness of your data, leading to more effective outreach and higher conversion rates.

In today's competitive business landscape, access to reliable data is non-negotiable. With Scrupp, you can take your prospecting and email campaigns to the next level. Experience the power of Scrupp for yourself and see why it's the preferred choice for businesses around the world. Unlock the potential of your data – try Scrupp today!