User Review
( votes)LinkedIn bills itself as “the world’s largest professional network on the internet.”
The Microsoft-owned service provides companies, employers and employees a business platform to connect and communicate with each other. Its over 800 million members generate a tremendous amount of data each year. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables you to access and use the data on the platform for sales purposes. Combined with Microsoft Dynamics 365, sales teams can enjoy the benefits of both applications in one solution.
What is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
Simply put, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a tool within LinkedIn that lets you find potential new customers, connect with them and stay up to date on their activities on LinkedIn.
You can choose between six different paid plans, depending on your purposes and your intended scope of usage. Once you have signed up for the plan of your choice, you can get started by searching for leads (individuals) or accounts (companies). A wide variety of filtering options help to refine your search. You can save your results in different lists to work with them later or send them direct messages, even without connecting with them first.
In your standard LinkedIn feed, not everything is tailored to your interest, and you are also subjected to advertising. With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can focus your feed on your business partners, clients or potential customers and drown out the noise of posts irrelevant to your business.
Benefits of connecting LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365
Integrating LinkedIn Sales Navigator into Dynamics 365 Sales allows you to use data and insights from LinkedIn in your Dynamics 365 environment.
Stay up to date on your prospects
You can create records of people and companies found via LinkedIn Sales Navigator in Dynamics 365 Sales with just a couple of clicks. The great advantage: you don’t have to arduously gather pieces of information about a person yourself; instead they usually input all relevant info, like their workplace and job, on their LinkedIn profiles themselves.
A function called Data Validation even compares data you have saved in Dynamics 365 with LinkedIn information and flags if your CRM data is outdated. For example, it lets you know when a lead has changed their workplace.
Side note: You can only use Data Validation if you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise.
Track your activities in Dynamics 365
Log all activities you perform in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, such as writing messages, back to Dynamics 365. You can also add notes to your leads and accounts. Whenever you need it, you have the activity history for every record in your CRM.
Reach people on a personal level
The connection to LinkedIn allows you to see if someone from your company is already connected to the prospect. If so, they could introduce you, since it is far more likely that the person will read a message from someone already in their network than from someone unknown.
If not, you can still send them a friendly LinkedIn message yourself. You don’t even have to leave Dynamics 365 for that but can do so from within the system.
Access your data on the go
As a sales professional, you probably spend a fair amount of time meeting (potential) clients. Luckily, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 apps are available as mobile versions, too. And so is the LinkedIn integration. That allows you to comfortably access not only your CRM, but also LinkedIn Sales Navigator from wherever you are.
Use one single source of truth
Maybe the most obvious but certainly the most compelling reason for connecting LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 is that you have all the data you need in one place. You never have to go back and forth between the two again in order to find some piece of information that is only in one solution.
Integrating LinkedIn Sales Navigator in Dynamics 365
Now that you understand why integration between LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 is a valuable idea, the next thing to know is how to make it happen.
Prerequisites
Your system and licensing must fulfill the following requirements in order to set up LinkedIn Sales navigator in your CRM environment:
- You are required to have a System Administrator security role in Dynamics 365.
- You need a Microsoft Relationship Sales subscription for Dynamics 365 or a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team or LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise contract.
- You need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Install LinkedIn Sales Navigator in Dynamics 365
You are given three options to enable LinkedIn Sales Navigator for your organization.
Install through Advanced Settings: When you are already signed in to an organization, navigate to “Advanced Settings” in your Dynamics 365 environment. Select LinkedIn Sales Navigator on the Business Management settings page. Click “Continue” in the “new Installation”-tab that opens and wait for a few minutes.
Install through AppSource page: Find the LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Dynamics 365 on AppSource and click on “GET IT NOW.” Accept the terms and conditions. Then, select the right organization from the shown list and agree to Microsoft’s and Dynamics 365’s legal terms and privacy statements.
This option makes sense if you are responsible for multiple organizations and want to install LinkedIn Sales Navigator in one of them.
Install through App Settings: Sign in to your Sales Hub app and find the “App Settings” below “Change area.” You will then see “General Settings,” where you must choose “LinkedIn integration” and select “Manage.” Click on “Enable LinkedIn integration” on the LinkedIn integration page and finish the installation.
Validate the installation
No matter which way you choose to install the solution, you always need to validate it. To do so go to “Settings” in your Dynamics 365 app and select “Advanced Settings.” Navigate to Settings > Customizations > Solutions and make sure the following solutions are installed:
- LinkedInSalesNavigatorControlsForUnifiedClient
- msdyn_LinkedInSalesNavigatorAnchor
Find more detailed instructions by Microsoft here or turn to us, proMX, for help.
The post Why You Should Integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.
