How sales and marketing can align around LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales is struggling to build pipeline. Marketing is struggling to generate demand. The two teams have spent years debating quantity of leads, lack of brand awareness, quality of leads, speed of follow up. Truth is, they've never truly worked as one team. Sitting between them, already paid for and barely touched, is a tool that could finally bring them together: LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

When budgets tighten, idle licences are the first thing to be reviewed and this tool is an obvious target: at around £1,500 per seat/year it's not a low-cost investment but when roughly a third of software licences in the average organisation go unused, the instinct is to switch off those who aren't using it. However, the cost is not necessarily the problem here. The waste is.

Put into the hands of both sales and marketing, LinkedIn Sales Navigator becomes a powerful ABM growth engine. The irony is that most organisations already have access to it but don't use it properly.

Key takeaways

Sales and marketing have never truly worked as one team, and the tool that could unite them is already paid for and barely used.
With around a third of software licences unused, the instinct is to cut Sales Navigator. The cost isn't the problem, the waste is.
Sales owns the tool and the relationships. Marketing owns the digital skills. Together they turn it into an ABM growth engine.
Marketing and sales target barely overlapping accounts (10% in LinkedIn's research), yet high overlap drives 40% higher campaign click-through.
Read the Sales Navigator usage data first: searches, saved leads, lists, connection growth, InMail acceptance and SSI show how the tool is really used.
Marketing adds value in three moves: multithreading connections, acting on Buyer Intent and responding fast to alerts, all human signals that build trust.

Two teams, one problem

Sales is finding pipeline harder to build than it has in years. Budgets are frozen or shrinking, decisions are slower and Forrester reports that around 86% of B2B purchases now stall before anyone signs. Buyers spend only 17% of their time in front of suppliers, so most of the deal happens in rooms the salesperson can't get into.

Marketing is squeezed from a similar direction. Research has moved into the AI engines, peer networks are influencing buyers earlier and the shortlist gets locked in before a vendor knows the buyer exists. Demand is harder to generate because demand is being shaped somewhere marketing cannot access. When pipeline dips, all eyes are on marketing-generated pipeline.

For all that shared pain, the two teams are barely working the same ground. LinkedIn's B2B Institute measured it across 7,046 organisations: the overlap between the accounts marketing targets and the accounts sales pursues was 10%. Two funnels that almost never meet.

LinkedIn data also shows that companies with a high overlap between marketing and sales see 40% higher click-through rates (CTR) on their digital campaigns. It makes sense to work together.

For a wider view of the alignment challenge, read the cost of marketing and sales misalignment.

Sales and marketing alignment

Start with the tool you already own

LinkedIn Sales Navigator runs on the one skill marketing uses every day: understanding an audience, engaging with them digitally, building a presence using content, knowing what to post and when. Marketing runs the social channels and lives those behaviours every day.

So the offer that changes the relationship is quite straightforward. Marketing says:

"You've got the Sales Navigator licences. We've got the digital skills. Let's work the same accounts."

That turns a hand-off into a partnership, built around a tool that most organisations already invest in.

Read the Sales Navigator report before you change anything

None of this works without changing how the tool gets used and you cannot change a habit without knowing what you're dealing with. Most tools go underused not because they are poor, but because nobody showed people how to use them in the context of their daily work. So before anything else, find out how your sales team are using it today.

The LinkedIn Sales Navigator dashboard gives you the headlines: activity levels, a few highlights, an SSI score. The exported data underneath tells the real story, the behaviour behind the numbers, not just whether someone logged in but whether they are using the tool in the way it is meant to be used.

Tribal Impact's guide to Sales Navigator usage reports and analytics provides a useful framework for reading this data.

Here's how to read it:

Searches and saved leads. Is anyone searching, and do they save the leads they find, or look someone up and revert to offline techniques? Saved leads surface in the alerts, with every job change, post and mention a fresh reason to reach out.

Lists and saved accounts. Are people bucketing accounts into lists they monitor, so the alerts flag leadership changes and news? Or is it an unsorted pile of names with no workable system behind it?

Connection growth, month on month. A salesperson's network should never sit still. Flat connections mean the digital work, the referrals and introductions that compound over time, has stopped.

InMail acceptance. A low acceptance rate means messages are going out cold. At best, ignored. At worst, creating a poor first impression. Fewer, researched, personalised notes beat volume every time.

SSI and its four parts. The Social Selling Index is worth correlating against performance. The component most reps score lowest on is engaging with insights, because it asks them to show up consistently and it is the first thing dropped when proposals pile up.

These are just some of the stories we'd surface when reading a Sales Navigator report. Together, these show whether someone is using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a directory or as the relationship engine it's built to be.

They also show marketing precisely where to help.

Put marketing's skills to work

Three ways marketing turns that data into action

1) Connections

In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, bring up a customer account that your Account Executive (AE) wants to grow. Using the filters, check how many people at that account are following your company page. Then check how many of them are connected to your AE. That's a light-bulb moment for your AE.

More often than not, most reps are connected to one or two people inside an account. LinkedIn and Ipsos research has found that top sales performers are 3x more likely to engage eight or more stakeholders and 57% of sellers are still waiting until after the first meeting to start multithreading.

The Trust Advantage

Marketing is the team best placed to coach what comes next: research the contact, personalise the approach and earn the first conversation, rather than firing off cold AI-generated outreach that lands a bad first impression.

2) Buyer Intent

This is the feature marketing should care about most. At Tribal, we call this Relationship Intent. While intent platforms such as 6sense, Demandbase and ZoomInfo provide information about which companies are in-market for your solutions, LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides relationship intent - the people behind the brand who are already engaging with your brand, your ads and your employee posts.

For more detail, see how to measure buying intent with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Running an event? Invite the accounts showing moderate to high intent instead of a cold list that might not know your brand. Planning paid media? Boost your experts' content into the accounts sales is working, so buyer intent begins to shift before the first outreach.

3) Alerts

The more tuned in your AE is to the customers and accounts they want to nurture, the faster they'll get the meeting. The same research from Ipsos and LinkedIn showed that top sales performers are 6x more likely to respond to a high-relevance signal within one hour than sellers who miss quota. When a seller responds within hours of a role change or a profile view, it says: they noticed me. That feeling of being seen is a trust signal.

Alerts, in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, are one of the best ways your AEs can target their time at the accounts they most care about. By building lead lists and account lists, they can stay on top of the signals that might just trigger a conversation.

Trust signals drive higher sales impact

Where technology meets your human edge

Step back and the thread is clear. As AI floods every channel with content, the thing that still moves a decision is human. Buyers anticipate around a third more revenue from conversations held in person than online and they trust expert and peer voices over brand messaging. The advantage now belongs to people: your experts, your leaders, your sales teams.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the common ground where two teams finally meet around the accounts that matter. Sales owns it and underuses it. Marketing holds the human skill that makes it work. Get the two working as one and the most undervalued tool in the building becomes the place sales and marketing stop blaming each other and start winning together.

For a recent example of connecting social media, employee advocacy, Sales Navigator insights and sales outcomes, read Connecting the dots between social media and sales.

Frequently asked questions

How can sales and marketing use LinkedIn Sales Navigator together?

Sales owns the licences and the account relationships; marketing owns the digital skills, knowing how to build presence, read an audience and engage. Marketing helps sales read their usage data, then aims events, paid media and content at the same accounts sales is working. That turns a hand-off into a partnership around one shared account list.

Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth the cost?

At around £1,500 a seat a year it is not a small investment, and with roughly a third of software licences unused it is an obvious target when budgets tighten. The waste, not the cost, is the real issue. Used properly across sales and marketing, it becomes an ABM growth engine most organisations already own.

How do you get more value from Sales Navigator?

Start by reading the usage data behind the dashboard: who is searching and saving leads, who builds lists and monitors alerts, whose network is growing, and how their InMail and SSI look. That shows whether people use it as a directory or a relationship engine, and exactly where to coach.

What is Buyer Intent in Sales Navigator?

Buyer Intent, which we call Relationship Intent, shows the people at an account already engaging with your brand, ads and employee posts. Unlike third-party intent platforms that flag which companies are in-market, it surfaces the human relationships behind the account, so you can invite warm contacts to events or aim paid media before the first outreach.

Why are sales and marketing misaligned, and why does it matter?

The two teams target barely overlapping accounts, LinkedIn measured just 10% overlap across 7,046 organisations, so effort is split across different buyers. Alignment matters commercially: companies with high overlap see around 40% higher click-through on digital campaigns, and shared focus concentrates both teams on the accounts that count.