Sales Nav Saved Searches - Don't Use This Filter (B2B lead gen)

After analyzing my lead generation strategies, I found that only 54% of my leads were in my target audience—meaning half of my efforts were wasted.

Problems:

Job Title Filtering Misses Variations: Filtering for specific job titles misses people with differently phrased titles (e.g., "Vice President of Operations" vs. "Operations VP").

2. Industry Filters Are Imprecise: Industry categories aren't precise enough (e.g., filtering for "real estate" includes agents, franchises, investment firms).

3. Excluding Incorrect Leads Is Difficult: Feedback loops aren't efficient for excluding wrong companies and job titles simultaneously.

Solution:

Create a Lookalike Audience: Used Ocean.io to build a lookalike company audience, refining until only correct companies remained.

2. Filter by Current Companies: Added these companies to Sales Navigator's "Current companies" filter to generate a month's worth of leads.

3. Exclude Irrelevant Functions: Excluded obviously irrelevant job functions (e.g., excluded "Human Resources" but kept "Operations" since I need financial analysts).

4. Manually Refine Job Titles: Reviewed the first 200 leads to exclude any incorrect job titles, improving the list.

5. Continuous Improvement: When someone responds with "no" or "not a good fit," ask if they're not the right person. If yes, add their job title to your exclusion list for future campaigns.

This approach helps you build the most accurate lead list without excluding parts of your target audience—just keep excluding irrelevant job titles as you go.

Hope this helps!

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