How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Build an ABM Account List

The short answer: for a named-account list of 200 companies with 3 to 5 contacts each, one Core seat at US$119.99 a month is enough to build it, since Core saves up to 10,000 leads and accounts per user and a custom list holds 1,000; sharing that list with sales inside Sales Navigator needs Advanced at US$159.99 a month (plan comparison, account types, checked on 5 November 2026). Write the account filters and save the search, save the accounts into a list, build one persona per buying role and let Relationship Explorer propose the committee, save the leads into lists with alerts on, read Account IQ before anyone writes a message, find the emails in an enrichment tool, and count replies per saved lead.

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Marketing builds the list, sales works it, and the argument about which accounts belong on it starts the week after. Filters you can write down end that argument. What each plan costs and withholds is in the Sales Navigator entry.

Before you open the filters:

1. The list arithmetic. For example, 200 accounts x 4 contacts = 800 leads. One custom list holds 1,000, so one list per persona keeps every list under the cap, and Core's 10,000 saves per user leave room for the next campaign (auto-save article, account types).
2. What you hold already. The customer accounts in your CRM, which feed the Past customer filter and the exclusions, and the three job titles that signed the last ten deals. Those titles become the first persona.
3. The baseline. Replies per message from the last batch of outreach sales sent by hand, so the list has something to beat.

What you need

• A Sales Navigator seat. Core if one person builds the list; Advanced if the list has to be shared inside the product (plan comparison, checked on 5 November 2026).
• A persona definition on paper: function, seniority, titles, region.
• An enrichment tool for the email addresses, such as Apollo, Lusha, Hunter or Clay.

Step 1: Write the account filters

Open Account filters. The ones that define a target list are company headcount, headcount growth over the last 12 months, department headcount and its growth, annual revenue, headquarters location and industry, plus the Spotlights for open jobs and buyer intent (filter definitions). Paste the final filter set into the campaign doc. A list sales can reproduce is a list sales will trust.

Step 2: Save the search, then save the accounts

Turn on the toggle at the top of the filters pane to save the search; up to 50 account searches and 50 lead searches can be kept, with new matches reported by email and in the All alerts tab (saved searches). Then save the accounts from the results into a new account list, which is the step LinkedIn's own getting-started page puts first.

Step 3: Build one persona per buying role

From Personas on the homepage, create a persona with a name of up to 35 characters, one or more functions, seniority levels, current job titles and a geography of regions or postal codes, not both (persona help). Three personas cover most committees: the budget holder, the person who runs the problem day to day, and the person who evaluates tools.

Step 4: Map the committee with Relationship Explorer

On each account page, Relationship Explorer proposes up to eight leads that match the persona you select, with job changes, recent posts and past-customer flags beside them, and it shows only people not yet saved (Relationship Explorer). Save the ones that fit. For a second pass, use the lead filters instead: Account lists set to your list, Persona set to the role, and Changed jobs in the last 90 days for the people most likely to buy something new.

Step 5: Put the leads into lists, alerts on

Save each lead into the list for its persona. Saved leads and accounts generate alerts, and two lists fill themselves: New Executives at Saved Accounts, refreshed weekly with CXO and VP arrivals from the past three months, and Recently Accepted Connections and InMails, refreshed daily (lists overview). Core keeps every list private to its owner; Advanced lets you share custom lists and saved searches with teammates (account types).

The list you build on Core is complete the moment it is good enough to hand over, and the hand-over is the feature LinkedIn placed one tier up, so the upgrade proposes itself on the day the work is done. On Core, hand over a sheet with the lead URLs instead.

Step 6: Let the AI read the account, and keep the judgement

Account IQ writes a summary of each account from LinkedIn's own data and public sources, on every subscription, with sections that can be missing for smaller companies (Account IQ); the Lead IQ tab does the same for a person (lead pages). Use both as the brief for a call. The human check: whatever goes into the CRM about an account is what a person confirmed from the account's own site or filing, not the summary.

On Advanced, Message Assist drafts the first InMail from those summaries, one lead at a time, at most 50 a month, and recipients are not told AI was involved (Message Assist FAQ). The seller edits every draft before it goes. Nothing is sent in bulk and nothing from a template, by LinkedIn's rules (InMail help).

Step 7: Get the emails elsewhere

Nothing exports: LinkedIn's help centre says lead and account information cannot be exported to CSV or XLS (export help page). Contact details on a lead page follow the member's privacy settings. So the enrichment tool takes a name and a company and returns an address at a credit a time: Hunter charges 1 credit per email found and 0.5 per verification (Hunter pricing); Lusha charges 1 per email and 5 per phone number (Lusha pricing). Type or paste the names; a browser extension that lifts the list out of Sales Navigator copies LinkedIn data without consent, which section 8.2 of the User Agreement bars.

Step 8: Hand it to sales and count

On Advanced Plus with CRM Sync, Contact Creation writes first name, last name, title, company, phone, lead source and, only when it is public on the profile, email into HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle Sales or Salesforce, and it needs an existing account record to attach to (contact creation). On any other plan the CRM import is a CSV you built from the enrichment tool, with the Sales Navigator lead URL in a column.

After four weeks, count per persona: leads saved, messages sent, replies, meetings. An InMail credit comes back when the lead answers within 90 days (InMail credits), so credits returned is a reply count LinkedIn keeps on your behalf. Compare it with the baseline. If the champion persona replies and the budget holder does not, the list is right and the message is not.

What LinkedIn's pages warn about

• Relationship Explorer hides saved leads, so repeat visits show different people, not the same eight (Relationship Explorer).
• CRM auto-save imports only, takes up to 48 hours, and prioritises by last-modified date when a list hits 1,000 (auto-save article).
• Unused InMail credits expire after 90 days and stop accruing at 150 (InMail credits).
• The trial takes a card and is closed to anyone who used a LinkedIn trial in the past 365 days (plan comparison).

FAQ

Can marketing build the list on a free LinkedIn account?

Partly. Free search finds people by title and company, but the account filters, personas, saved searches, lists and alerts are the paid product, and Premium Business stops at basic filters (Premium versus Sales Navigator).

Does the list sync to HubSpot?

Only on Advanced Plus with CRM Sync, which LinkedIn's CRM page says is "only available for Sales Navigator Advanced Plus users" (CRM integration). On Advanced, the list is shared inside Sales Navigator and reaches HubSpot as a file.

How many saved searches can one seat keep?

50 lead searches and 50 account searches (saved searches).