Ledgeview Partners recently sat down with InsideView, Inc. to get an inside look at how InsideView and LinkedIn Sales Navigator compare and work for salespeople in Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM.
SPOILER ALERT: The insight and information shared within InsideView’s Aug. 28, 2018 presentation was beyond expectation, so we asked them back for more this October to deliver another version!
Between the two, a lot of insight and information was uncovered, which we explore in this blog post.
If you’ve yet to explore the capabilities that InsideView and LinkedIn Sales Navigator can offer your organization, you’re in for a treat.
In this post, we break down the key teachings so you can understand how to optimize your CRM to become smarter sellers in the digital world with InsideView and/or LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
As a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM user, you will easily see the vast potential that they both offer.
Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Availability
InsideView is included with most Microsoft Dynamics Online licenses in the U.S. and Canada, including:
- Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise
- Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
- Dynamics 365 for Relationship Sales
- Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
- Dynamics 365 for Field Service
- Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation
InsideView can be purchased separately for Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premise, or for online systems outside of the U.S. and Canada.
Whereas, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is part of the Microsoft Dynamics Relationship Sales licenses and can be purchased separately for on-premise users, but not integrated with CRM.
About InsideView vs. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
InsideView is classified as an account research tool that focuses on getting data on companies that have over 5 employees, and data on individuals who are considered “management’ or “leadership” within their organizations.
As far as integration is concerned, InsideView offers a one-way sync to CRM, and the information you will find in InsideView comes from 40,000 top resources on the Web, including publications like “The Wallstreet Journal”, “The New York Times”, P.R. newswires, and more.
Oppositely, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is classified as a networking community. It retrieves data from all companies and all of the people in its network.
You can only view LinkedIn Sales Navigator in CRM, and all of the information you will see that is pulled from LinkedIn Sales Navigator is user-generated, as opposed to having information generated from the top news sources mentioned above.
Data
Data can be classified and broken down further between InsideView and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
First of all, users outside of LinkedIn will have their information pulled into InsideView. Companies across the Web and outside of LinkedIn are included in the data. More than 7 million companies are accounted for.
Whereas, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, users must have a LinkedIn profile to show up in their data. More than 4.5 million companies are accounted for.
InsideView has deep firmographics, whereas LinkedIn Sales Navigator has basic firmographics.
For those who are unaware, firmographics are “descriptive attributes of firms that can be used to aggregate individual firms into meaningful market segments”.
Social feeds pulled into InsideView range from Twitter to Facebook to Blogs, whereas LinkedIn Sales Navigator only accounts for LinkedIn content.
Financial assessments of public companies only are available in InsideView, and a family tree is also displayed. LinkedIn Sales Navigator has none of these features.
The more specific information you see in InsideView provides better information to better your sales process, such as a top concern among salespeople using Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM today: changes in leadership.
InsideView has a patented algorithm that sorts, analyzes, and documents this information.
Firmographics
Fields accounted for in InsideView include:
- Logo & name
- Ownership
- Ticker symbol
- SIC code
- Revenue
- Number of employees
- HQ phone & fax
- Website
- Address
- Description
Fields accounted for in LinkedIn Sales Navigator include:
- Ownership
- Ticker symbol
- Specialties
- Number of employees – range
- Website
- Address
- Description
Company News
InsideView’s database pulls types of news from 18 different business agents that are categorized for the salesperson.
Custom agents are defined by the user and team, and emailed news includes both detailed and multiple.
In CRM, you will see accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and dashboards with InsideView.
As far as company news goes, InsideView pulls information and updates from top news sites (as mentioned above) and P.R. newswires, even blog posts.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator does not categorize their information or include custom agents.
News widgets can be shown anywhere with LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LSN) and news sources are strictly pulled from LinkedIn posts.
Emailed news includes both summary and multiple.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is available at the professional, team, and enterprise levels. The higher your subscription, the more information is available to you.
You can learn more about what edition is right for your company here.
Interacting with Contacts
InsideView includes LinkedIn profiles, then extends beyond it to include people without a LinkedIn history, so the contacts you have with InsideView potentially offer a more expansive range than LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which only includes people with a LinkedIn history.
With InsideView, you will get information on C-Level executives, and see reports on job changes that are news-driven or crowdsourced.
Job changes recorded on LinkedIn Sales Navigator are dependent upon the user updating his/her profile, so the results may not be as up-to-date as these news sources in InsideView.
Social contributors are the primary type of contact you will gain with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
When it comes to interacting with contacts, with InsideView, you can reach and see their social media activity on Facebook and Twitter as well as LinkedIn, whereas, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it is constrained to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator requires a two-way sync for contacts with CRM including notes, messages, and InMails, offering 50/mo. for the enterprise-level edition.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator also shows the geo-location of your contacts, whereas InsideView currently does not, though they affirm it is coming soon.
InsideView pulls contact information with a one-way update into CRM. Emails, phone numbers, and Twitter handles are also pulled and recorded.
What’s right for me, as a salesperson, and my organization?
That’s a great question, and it is completely conditional to the needs of your sales team and organization.
While there are benefits to both, some may be more evident on one side or the other for your place of business.
The team at InsideView has broken down some of the biggest differences between the two platforms into the following identifications:
- InsideView has small box visibility in CRM, whereas with LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LSN), widgets can be anywhere
- InsideView navigation happens entirely in CRM, whereas LinkedIn Sales Navigator happens in an iframe in CRM, then in a browser
- For syncing, Inside View lets users download accounts and contacts, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets users download notes, InMails, messages, and tracking/saving
- InsideView offers deep account information as far as data is concerned, whereas LinkedIn accounts for overall people
- Connections in InsideView can happen within 6-degrees of separation, but connections in LinkedIn must be 1st–3rd-degree connections
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator has no access to support or training, but InsideView has direct access to humans
- InsideView is included with online licenses in CRM, but, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, there is an additional cost
A huge thank you to our friend at InsideView, Michelle Horn, for this amazing presentation. If you’ve yet to watch it, you can replay it here on-demand.
To learn more about InsideView, visit InsideView.com.
To learn more about LinkedIn Sales Navigator, visit Business.LinkedIn.com/Sales-Solutions.
If you need support or training using these within your CRM system, Ledgeview is here to help. Contact us for CRM Consulting Services here.
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