SALES-NAVIGATOR.md

# Sales Navigator — reference

My tier: <Core>

## Filter set — lead search

**Company:** company headcount, company type, company headquarters location, industry, current company, past company.
**Role:** job title (current and past), seniority level, function, years in current position, years at current company, years of experience.
**Personal:** geography, first name, last name, profile language, groups, school.
**Activity and intent:** posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days, changed jobs in the past 90 days, mentioned in the news, following your company, viewed your profile recently.
**Workflow:** connection degree, TeamLink connections, saved lead lists, account lists.

**Advanced tier only:** headcount growth, department headcount, department headcount growth, technologies used, job opportunities posted.

If my tier above is Core, never instruct me to use a filter in the Advanced list. Name the substitute instead.

## Boolean

**Accepted in:** job title, company, keywords. Nowhere else.
**Operators:** AND, OR, NOT, "exact phrase", (grouping).
**Not supported:** wildcards, asterisks, proximity operators. A string containing one fails silently.
**Dropdown filters** — industry, seniority, headcount, geography, function — are pick-lists and do not accept Boolean.

The keywords field searches the entire profile, which is why an unnecessary keyword string is the most common cause of a search returning almost nothing.

## Caps

- A single search returns at most 2,500 results, paginated 25 at a time. Regular LinkedIn search stops at 1,000.
- Saved searches: see LINKEDIN-LIMITS.md for the figure on my tier.
- Saved leads and accounts: 10,000 each on Sales Navigator.
- InMail: see LINKEDIN-LIMITS.md. The allowance is the same on Core and Advanced.

## Known unreliability

- **Industry tags** are self-reported by the company and wrong often enough that industry should rarely be a primary filter. Prefer headcount plus title.
- **Seniority level** is inferred by LinkedIn, not claimed by the person, and is unreliable at small companies where founders are tagged "Owner" and heads of function are tagged "Senior".
- **Headcount** is the LinkedIn profile count, not the payroll. Companies with contractor-heavy workforces read small.

## Search design rules

1. Aim for 200–1,500 results. Hitting 2,500 means the search stopped filtering before it stopped matching.
2. Build dropdowns first, Boolean last. It is easier to see which filter killed the count.
3. One search per trigger, rather than one search with every trigger in it. Alerts are per search.
4. Name saved searches so someone else can tell what they are for.

## Account search

Different filter set, aimed at companies: headcount, headcount growth, department headcount, revenue (where LinkedIn has it), technologies, job opportunities, connections. Use it when the ICP's strongest attributes are company-level and the titles are loose.