How to Export Lead Lists From Sales Navigator [Ultimate Guide]

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is one of the most popular prospecting platforms among sales professionals—and for good reason. Forrester found that Sales Navigator yielded a 312% ROI over three years by increasing research efficiency, sales productivity, and data quantity and quality.

While Sales Navigator streamlines prospecting and list-building, a bulk export process does not exist. This poses a significant challenge for sales teams, who rely on list exports for improved data enrichment, remarketing, team collaboration, and more. 

In this post, you’ll learn more about Sales Navigator’s export capabilities, including how you can use strategies and third-party tools to facilitate list exporting. 

Sales Navigator’s export capabilities

LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you identify strong prospects, message them directly on LinkedIn to scale up outreach, and build lists. However, exporting the data on those lists can be challenging. 

Sales Navigator does integrate with some CRM tools like Salesforce and HubSpot for Advanced Plus users. This allows users to sync lead lists for CRM data enrichment, adding new leads to your CRM and potentially updating existing lead profiles with new, relevant information. 

While this helps qualify users, it comes at a high price tag, starting at around $135 per month per user when paid annually. For many small sales teams, this cost may not be worth it. 

This is particularly true considering some CRM software doesn’t have native integrations for Sales Navigator… and there’s no option to export lead lists directly, even on the Advanced Plus plan.

That’s the crux of the issue—Sales Navigator does not offer a native export option that allows users to download lead lists to a CSV or XSL file. Many users have been frustrated by this, especially since LinkedIn Premium accounts allow users to download contact lists of their on-platform connections. 

This can prevent internal collaboration, data enrichment, and syncing to third-party marketing tools that rely on list-based uploading. 

Tools to enhance your lead export experience

While Sales Navigator has significant limitations around lead list exports, there are third-party tools that can help. These third-party tools may have their own CRM integrations for seamless data sync. Still, the most effective solutions will typically involve specialized prospecting tools that can pull data from Sales Navigator to build lists within their software, which can be easily exported. 

Kaspr is a prospecting tool that supports and streamlines prospecting across all of LinkedIn, including Sales Navigator. You can use Kaspr to identify prospects and capture essential B2B contact data, building strong and targeted lists.

Kaspr’s LinkedIn Chrome Extension can speed up the process, allowing you to find contact data like a prospect’s name, job title, phone number, and professional email address while browsing. 

You can add prospects to your lists on Kaspr through Sales Navigator and then use Kaspr to download your searches or send the lead data to your sales and CRM tools, bypassing the restricted exporting processes altogether. 

The best part? You can try out Kaspr’s data for free. Sign up using your work email below (no credit card is needed). 👇

How to export lead lists from Sales Navigator

To export lead lists from Sales Navigator, there are three options available: 

1. You can create lead lists manually.
2. Connect Sales Navigator to your CRM with a native integration.
3. Use third-party tools for data sync and facilitate multiple export options (including exporting lead lists to CSV!).

Let’s look at how to leverage each to export leads from Sales Navigator. 

Manually transfer lead data 

Small sales teams on tight budgets may sometimes use manual data entry to move lead lists to their CRM databases. This is precisely what it sounds like: You’ll have Sales Navigator open in one window and an Excel file or your CRM open in another, and you’ll move all essential lead information over, one component at a time.

As you can imagine, this is extraordinarily time-consuming and potentially prone to human error. Sales development representatives (SDRs) will need time to find and connect with high-quality leads, which will drastically reduce pipeline growth. 

This is not an efficient solution. We strongly recommend using one of the other two solutions to export lead lists to sales Navigator. 

Set up Sales Navigator data sync with CRM integrations 

As mentioned, Sales Navigator offers native integrations for select CRM integrations if you’re an Advanced Plus user. 

While the exact details may differ slightly depending on your chosen CRM, here’s how you get started:

1. Go to your CRM and find the Sales Navigator app package integration.
2. Install the app on your CRM to sync the two platforms.
3. View Embedded Profiles or Embedded Experiences in your CRM.
4. If your CRM doesn’t begin synching automatically, enable CRM sync and activity writeback in its settings. The writeback settings allow you to import contact data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to your CRM. 
5. Data syncing typically takes less than 10 minutes.

(Source: HubSpot)

You can view individual product pages for different CRM integrations (and specific installation instructions) here:

• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics 365

Exporting lead lists with Kaspr 

Kaspr can enhance Sales Navigator or work as an alternative to Sales Navigator. Use the third-party Chrome Extension or in-app tools to build and export lists.  

Third-party tools like Kaspr work alongside Sales Navigator to expand the platform’s exceptional data with additional functionality— including lead list exports. 

When using Kaspr to prospect on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, you’ll see the option to add users to lists. Users will be added to a default list unless you add them to a specific one. Many sales reps keep lists of segmented leads that fit their ideal customer profile (ICP) and lists of current customers. 

Next, go to your Leads page in the Kaspr dashboard. You can see the leads you’ve saved and an “Export all” tab at the top of the dashboard. At this point, you can export either select contacts or lists or all contacts. 

After you click on the export button, you’ll see that you have three options for exporting: Export to a CSV file, to Excel, or through integrations to your CRM or sales software. If you’re using an integration, select the integration of your choice. 

Once you do this, all your lead data will be exported in the format of your choosing. This includes contact details like name, job title, and company details like size and industry. 

👉 Did you know you can sign up to get started with Kaspr free today?

Best practices for lead list export

Want to get the most out of your lead lists after you export them (using whatever method you choose)? We’ve got a few Sales Navigator tips that will help. First, start with optimized lead lists. 

Exported lead lists are most valuable when they’re strong to begin with. You should ideally have leads organized into distinct lists to help you better understand what audience segment they fit into, where they are in the buying process, and how to best connect with them. 

For example, using Kaspr’s add-to-list feature can help you effectively categorize leads before you export them. Once you save your leads to the Kaspr dashboard, you can pick the lead list to which you’d like to add them.

It’s also good to comb through your lists occasionally and ensure they’re up-to-date. For example, if you’ve decided that one prospect isn’t fit, you may want to remove them from a high-intent list. 

Next, remember to prioritize data integrity. 

Data hygiene should be a critical consideration. You don’t want to find yourself with lists of leads with outdated information or duplicate data. It’s also essential to ensure that your export method downloads all the data you need and formats it consistently.

This is where manual exporting often struggles. Human error may cause someone to accidentally put the wrong phone number next to the wrong prospect, for example, or put leads into the wrong list. Automated export processes like Kaspr can help. 

Finally, leverage your exported lead lists for outreach and follow-up.

There are plenty of ways you can use your exported lead lists, including the following:

• Sync the lists with your CRM for improved data enrichment with up-to-date and accurate lead information.
• Leverage your CRM to set up autoresponder campaigns, follow-up reminders, and deal customization. 
• Cross-reference the lists with other sales teams and ensure that each lead has a rep assigned to them.
• Upload the list to your email marketing software for personalized follow-up sequences. 
• Add the list to social media marketing sites for advanced remarketing PPC campaigns. 

Many third-party marketing and sales platforms allow for easy list uploading with a simple CSV import function as long as the data is formatted correctly. 

Common issues and troubleshooting 

Depending on the tools and methods you use, you may run into the following issues when exporting lead lists:

• Missing data. Some third-party platforms struggle to export every field of data that you need. For example, they may capture the phone numbers you collected from LinkedIn, but not the prospect’s company or. Make sure you choose a tool that syncs or exports all the data fields you need.
• Poorly formatted exports. Again, not all third-party tools are created equal. Some may download all the data but fail to label the different columns, making it incredibly difficult to reformat manually. Poorly formatted exports are also more difficult to upload to other sales and marketing platforms. 
• Inconsistent data syncs. Manual export processes can be complicated to maintain, even if only because they require busy salespeople to remember to do so. Automated export processes with tools like Kaspr facilitate improved data syncing for always up-to-date data. 

Conclusion

Finding potential customers— and their contact data like an accurate email or phone number— is no easy task. The last thing you want is to have that hard work go to waste because there’s no easy native option to export lead lists from your prime prospecting tool.

While Sales Navigator is an outstanding platform, it has significant limitations when exporting those lead lists to third-party tools or even CSV spreadsheets. While you can rely on manual data entry processes or native CRM integrations, the former is time-consuming and is still limited only to Advanced Plus users using one of a few select CRMs. 

Third-party tools like Kaspr can help you capture the value of Sales Navigator and leverage it off-platform without missing a beat. You can easily prospect, build lists, and export those lists into the file and format of your choosing, allowing your entire team to not only find strong ICP fits but also convert them. 

Want to learn more? Sign up to Kaspr today. 👇