How to export leads from Sales Navigator, and how to build a prospect list without it

Sales Navigator has no button to export leads to CSV: LinkedIn Help states that LinkedIn does not offer the option to export account and lead information from Sales Navigator into a CSV or XLS file. What LinkedIn does offer is moving leads into your CRM through the CRM sync in the Advanced Plus plan, and saving them to lists inside Sales Navigator. If you need a spreadsheet with an email and a phone number for each contact, the list is built outside Sales Navigator: companies filtered through LinkedIn company search, people by job title inside those companies, and contact enrichment on top.

What Sales Navigator is and what it does for prospecting

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn's paid subscription for sales teams: it adds advanced people and company search filters, lead and account lists, alerts on saved leads and lead recommendations to LinkedIn. LinkedIn Help sums it up as the tool to find the right people and engage them effectively.

For prospecting, a rep uses Sales Navigator to find decision-makers at target accounts, follow them with alerts and organise them into lists. An SDR selling logistics software, for example, can search for heads of operations at 51 to 200 person transport companies in Rotterdam, save the ones that fit and get alerts on those saved leads.

Sales Navigator is not an email or phone database, nor a CRM: it is the search and tracking layer on top of LinkedIn data that comes before the first message.

Sales Navigator plans: Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus

Sales Navigator has three plans, according to LinkedIn Help ("Sales Navigator account types and features"):

• Sales Navigator Core is a single-user licence with advanced search, custom lists and alerts.
• Sales Navigator Advanced adds teamwork: shared lists and saved searches, buyer intent signals and uploading a book of business from a CSV.
• Sales Navigator Advanced Plus is the only plan that moves information from Sales Navigator into the CRM and from the CRM into Sales Navigator.

All three Sales Navigator plans let each user save 10,000 leads and accounts, according to the same page. The Advanced CSV upload brings accounts into Sales Navigator; it does not take them out.

Can you export leads from Sales Navigator to CSV

No: Sales Navigator does not export leads or accounts to a file. LinkedIn Help ("Export Account and Lead Information from Sales Navigator") says LinkedIn does not offer the option to export that information into a CSV or XLS file, and points to the Advanced Plus plan for alternative solutions.

The Advanced Plus alternatives all go through the CRM: syncing leads and accounts with the CRM, Sales Navigator profiles embedded in the CRM, and creating a lead in the CRM from the lead page in Sales Navigator, according to the same page. None of the three produces a CSV.

How to get leads out of Sales Navigator through LinkedIn's own routes

LinkedIn offers three routes for working Sales Navigator leads: syncing them with the CRM on Advanced Plus, saving them to lists and saved searches, or copying the details by hand. Only the CRM sync moves leads out of LinkedIn automatically.

Sync Sales Navigator with your CRM (Advanced Plus)

Sales Navigator CRM integration is only available to Advanced Plus users, according to LinkedIn Help ("Integration between Sales Navigator and your CRM"). The steps LinkedIn describes are:

1. Install the Sales Navigator app package for your CRM, a job for whoever administers the CRM.
2. Add Embedded Profiles, so Sales Navigator information shows inside the CRM record.
3. Turn on CRM Sync and, optionally, activity writeback, which writes selected Sales Navigator information back to the CRM.

LinkedIn Help names Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot and Oracle as the CRMs for this integration.

Save leads to lists and saved searches

Lead lists are how Sales Navigator organises leads on every plan. From the search results you can save 25 leads at a time, up to 10,000 saved leads in total, according to LinkedIn Help ("View and save leads in Sales Navigator").

A Sales Navigator saved search keeps your filters and keywords, and sends weekly emails and homepage alerts when new people or companies match the criteria, according to LinkedIn Help ("Save lead and account searches in Sales Navigator").

The Sales Navigator results page shows up to 2,500 lead results across 100 pages, or up to 1,000 account results across 40 pages, according to LinkedIn Help ("Search results limit in Sales Navigator"). A search above that number is split into smaller searches, for example by region or company size.

Copy Sales Navigator details by hand

Copying each lead's name, title and company into a spreadsheet by hand works on every Sales Navigator plan. It suits short lists, where the rep reviews every profile.

Copying by hand adds no email or phone number: those have to be found afterwards, person by person or with an enrichment tool. The methods for finding a contact's phone number are covered one by one in a separate guide.

Extensions that extract Sales Navigator data: what LinkedIn's User Agreement says

LinkedIn's User Agreement, effective since 3 November 2025, prohibits in section 8.2 ("Don'ts") using software, scripts, robots, browser plugins or add-ons "to scrape or copy the Services, including profiles and other data from the Services". The section names browser plugins and add-ons explicitly: an extension that copies Sales Navigator leads into a file fits that description.

Section 8.2 of LinkedIn's User Agreement also prohibits getting around the use limits of the Services, such as search results. So with the 2,500-result cap, the right approach is to split the search into several smaller ones.

Within LinkedIn's User Agreement, a sales team gets the most out of Sales Navigator with the Advanced Plus CRM sync, lists and saved searches, and copying by hand from the profiles a rep reviews one by one.

How to build a prospect list without Sales Navigator

A prospect list without Sales Navigator is built in four steps: pick the companies that match your ideal customer profile, find the people with the right job title at those companies, add their email and phone number, and save the result to a list. These steps are the list-building stage of the five stages of prospecting.

1. Search for companies on LinkedIn with company filters. In HappySales, for example, you filter by single keywords, by location (20 at most), by industry (20 at most from the 434 LinkedIn defines) and by headcount band, from 1-10 to 10,001+ employees.
2. Split large markets. Each HappySales company search returns up to 1,000 companies, the cap of LinkedIn's search; for a bigger market, split it by location or company size. If you already have an account list, HappySales imports up to 500 companies per CSV file.
3. Find the decision-makers at each company. HappySales filters the people at those companies by job title, function, seniority or recent job change, with at most 100 per company and 10,000 in each search. If you are not sure which title decides, this guide covers where to find a company's decision-makers.
4. Add the email and phone number. In each run, HappySales fills in the email and phone number of at most 100 contacts by querying several data providers in a waterfall; it only charges when it finds the data and labels each email deliverable, catch-all or undeliverable.

Companies that are hiring are a buying signal for deciding which accounts to start with.

Comparison: the routes to a list of leads

The routes to a list of leads differ in the data, the plan they require, email and phone, and the work.

Route	What you get	Needs Sales Navigator	Email and phone	Effort
CRM sync	Sales Navigator leads and accounts in the CRM, and CRM records in Sales Navigator	Yes, Advanced Plus plan	Only what the CRM already holds	Initial setup by the CRM admin
Lists and saved searches	Organised leads and weekly alerts inside Sales Navigator	Yes, any plan	No, the list stays in Sales Navigator	Low: 25 leads at a time
Copying by hand	Name, title and company in a spreadsheet	No	No, found separately afterwards	High: one profile at a time
Own list from company search and enrichment	Companies, people by title and contact details in one list	No	Yes, whatever the enrichment finds	Medium: four filtered steps

HappySales: a prospect list with email and phone, without Sales Navigator

HappySales is a B2B prospecting tool that builds the prospect list without Sales Navigator: it finds companies on LinkedIn, finds the contacts at those companies, adds their email and phone number and launches the campaign. It works inside Claude or ChatGPT as an MCP connector, where each step is a plain-language request, or from its web app.

A founder selling to agencies can ask Claude: "find marketing agencies with 11 to 50 employees in London and Manchester, find their CEO or sales director and get their email and phone number". HappySales runs the LinkedIn company search, finds the people by title and enriches the chosen contacts, which land in a list with a status the user sets: new, qualified, contacted or discarded.

HappySales sequences mix LinkedIn and email steps. On LinkedIn, each account sends within its own time window, with a daily cap and an hourly spread, and HappySales stops the campaign if LinkedIn restricts that account.

HappySales does not send InMail and is not a CRM: it sits upstream of the CRM, with no pipeline or forecasting. To connect it, add HappySales as a connector in Claude or ChatGPT with OAuth 2.1 authentication; to get started, talk to the HappySales team.

Sales Navigator or your own list: when each one fits

Sales Navigator fits when you follow a few accounts closely inside LinkedIn, and your own list fits when you need email and phone numbers to launch campaigns. Many teams combine both: Sales Navigator to research strategic accounts and their own list for SDR outreach.

• Sales Navigator fits if you sell to large accounts with buying committees, need alerts on saved leads and your team already lives in the CRM: with Advanced Plus, leads reach the CRM without exporting anything.
• Your own list fits if you need an email and phone number for every contact, work at volume with hundreds of companies per market, or want to launch the campaign from the same tool where you build the list.

What decides is where the data ends up: in the CRM, through the Advanced Plus sync; in a sequence with email and phone, through a list built outside Sales Navigator.