How To Upload CSV Files To LinkedIn Sales Navigator? (2026)

Do you want to manage and organize your lead lists in one place effectively? Then, you only need to upload your lead list CSV files to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This feature saves you time and ensures your data is accurately mapped and ready to use.

In this guide, I'll talk about:

1. Why upload CSV to LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
2. How To Upload CSV Files To LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
3. Find Decision-Makers Inside the Companies You Uploaded
4. Other Sales Navigator Advanced Features
5. Questions About LinkedIn Sales Navigator CSV Uploads

Let's see how you can get the most out of Sales Navigator using this advanced feature.

Why Upload CSV To LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Uploading a CSV to LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you bulk-import a list of target companies from any external source — CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce, B2B databases like Crunchbase, or job boards — into a single Account List, instead of searching for companies one by one.

You'd need to upload CSV to Sales Navigator because you can import data from other B2B databases (Crunchbase, Wappalyzer, etc.), job boards, or CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.) and put it in one place. Instead of using the search engine to find target companies one by one, you can bulk upload your Excel file or CSV and save a lot of time.

But this is only possible when you have a Sales Navigator Advanced account. Sales Navigator Advanced (formerly Sales Navigator Team) is LinkedIn's mid-tier B2B sales subscription that adds team collaboration tools and bulk-import features — including CSV upload — that are not available in the entry-level Sales Navigator Core (Professional) plan.

If you have Sales Navigator Core (Professional), you must upgrade your subscription to use this feature.

Benefits of uploading account lists

Uploading a CSV to Sales Navigator gives you three concrete advantages beyond simple time savings.

First, advanced filtering and targeting. Once your companies are inside Sales Navigator as an Account List, you can layer any of Sales Navigator's 40+ lead filters on top — seniority, job function, geography, hire date — without rebuilding the company list from scratch each time.

Second, real-time profile updates. Sales Navigator continuously refreshes the accounts in your uploaded list as people change roles, companies add headcount, or LinkedIn users update their profiles. You're working from live data, not a static snapshot.

Third, structured and organized data. Your CSV becomes a named, searchable, shareable Account List inside Sales Navigator. Your team can collaborate on the same list, and you avoid the chaos of scattered spreadsheets and duplicate work.

Sales Navigator Core vs Advanced: Which plan should you choose?

If you only need basic lead search and unlimited InMail, Sales Navigator Core works. But CSV upload, TeamLink, Smart Links, and multi-seat collaboration all require Sales Navigator Advanced.

Here's the deciding line: if you're importing target company lists from external sources — a CRM export, a conference attendee list, a Crunchbase pull — you need Advanced. If you're building every search manually inside LinkedIn and working solo, Core is enough.

Most teams running serious outbound pay for Advanced. Solo founders sometimes start with Core and upgrade when the manual search bottleneck hits.

How To Upload CSV Files To LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Uploading a CSV to LinkedIn Sales Navigator takes under five minutes: navigate to Account Lists, upload your file, map the column headers to LinkedIn's fields, and let Sales Navigator match your companies automatically (typically within 5–30 minutes).

1. Go to the Account Lists tab

In your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, click on Accounts > Account list > Create an account list > Upload and Account from CSV.

Don't forget that this option will only be visible if you have a Sales Navigator Advanced subscription.

2. Upload your file

When you click on the button, а pop-up will appear. Follow these guidelines:

1. You can have a maximum of 1000 companies
2. Include at least the account name

The more details you add (ID, Website, etc.…), the more likely LinkedIn is to match your CSV with the right companies. So, when you upload an account list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, provide as much data as possible.

The best-case scenario is when you have the LinkedIn URL of the company page. LinkedIn can easily retrieve the company in its database when you provide this information.

3. Map the data inputs

Once you upload your file, Sales Navigator will ask you to map its headers to the expected inputs.

Associate the right column header with the right data and press launch.

4. Let LinkedIn do the matching

LinkedIn often takes 5–30 minutes to retrieve the companies, depending on your file size.

When you launch a CSV upload, a little tag "CSV" will appear next to the list's name.

Once you get the list, you can start your LinkedIn outreach.

This example shows that the matching is perfect only by providing company names and websites. However, Sales Navigator can make mistakes and associate companies in your list with the wrong LinkedIn company pages.

2 options here:

1. Find the LinkedIn URLs of all company pages before the upload to ensure the matching is perfect.
2. Don't provide the LinkedIn URL, and you spend some time double-checking the results manually.

Personally, I prefer option 1, as double-checking data is painful.

Use AI enrichment to pre-clean your CSV

Enrich the CSV before uploading — missing LinkedIn company URLs, domains, HQ — using an AI enrichment workflow so Sales Navigator's matcher associates every row with the correct company page.

AI-driven enrichment playbooks now pre-clean CSVs with LinkedIn URLs and firmographics so Sales Navigator's matching step returns near-100% accurate account associations. This eliminates the manual double-checking the article warns about.

Run your CSV through an enrichment tool that appends LinkedIn company URLs and missing firmographic fields before you upload, and Sales Navigator's matching becomes a non-issue.

Find Decision-Makers Inside the Companies You Uploaded

The fastest way to find decision-makers inside your uploaded companies is to open Lead Search in Sales Navigator, apply the Account List filter to select your CSV-imported list, and then add a Current Job Title filter for roles like CEO, VP, or Head of Sales.

Now that you've uploaded your CSV file to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the next step is identifying key decision-makers within those companies. Connecting with the right people ensures that your outreach efforts are targeted and effective.

1. Use Relationship Maps to Spot Key Contacts

Once you've uploaded your target companies, Sales Navigator's Relationship Maps help you quickly find relevant stakeholders.

Sales Navigator Relationship Maps are visual org-chart overlays inside a company's Sales Navigator profile that display key employees, their roles, and your team's existing connections to them, helping you identify and prioritise buying-committee members at a glance.

These maps highlight key employees within each company, allowing you to filter out those with buying power.

2. Leverage Advanced Search Filters

Sales Navigator's Advanced Search Filters enable you to find decision-makers based on job titles, seniority levels, and industry-specific keywords.

Here's the exact process:

1. Open Sales Navigator and go to Lead Search.
2. Use the "Account List" filter. Select the account list you've created from your uploaded CSV.
3. Add job titles. In the "Current job title" filter, enter relevant leadership roles like "CEO," "Founder," "Head of Sales," "VP of Marketing," etc.

Apply filters and review results. You'll now have a list of decision-makers within the companies from your CSV file, making your outreach more targeted and effective.

Watch this step-by-step video tutorial to see exactly how it's done:

3. Be Aware of Lead Search Limits

Sales Navigator limits the number of profile searches you can perform each month. If you hit your search cap, you may have to wait until the next cycle to access more leads.

To bypass these limitations, consider saving key leads into custom lists as you find them and using filters strategically to avoid unnecessary profile views.

Check out this guide for more ways to find decision-makers on LinkedIn.

Use AI-Assisted Search to describe your ideal decision-maker

Use Sales Navigator's AI-Assisted Search to describe your ideal decision-maker in plain English (e.g. 'VP of Marketing at SaaS companies I just uploaded') and let the AI convert it into Lead filters scoped to your CSV-imported Account List.

LinkedIn rolled out AI-Assisted Search inside Sales Navigator, letting reps build lead searches from natural-language prompts on top of account lists. Instead of clicking through 10+ filter dropdowns, you type a sentence describing who you're looking for, and Sales Navigator translates it into a filtered lead search.

This is faster than manually stacking filters and especially useful when you're not sure which exact job titles to target — the AI suggests titles based on your description.

Use Account IQ to auto-generate company research summaries

After uploading a CSV account list, run LinkedIn's Account IQ on each imported company to auto-generate an AI account research summary (financials, priorities, challenges, strategy) instead of manually researching each account.

LinkedIn released Account IQ as a native Sales Navigator AI feature that summarizes company research on-demand for accounts in your lists. Click into any company in your uploaded Account List, hit the Account IQ button, and get a one-page AI briefing covering recent news, strategic priorities, and likely pain points.

This eliminates the hour-per-account research grind. You get enough context to personalize outreach without falling down a Google rabbit hole.

Use Lead IQ for AI-generated prospect briefings

After identifying decision-makers inside the uploaded accounts, use Sales Navigator's Lead IQ to auto-summarize each prospect's role, recent activity, and conversation starters instead of clicking through each profile.

LinkedIn launched Lead IQ inside Sales Navigator, delivering AI-generated per-lead summaries and outreach angles for leads found inside saved account lists. Select a lead from your search results, open their profile sidebar, and Lead IQ shows you a paragraph summarizing what they do, what they've posted recently, and a suggested first-line for your InMail.

This is the per-lead equivalent of Account IQ. It saves the 2–3 minutes you'd spend reading a profile and gives you a ready-made personalization hook.

How to export account lists from Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator doesn't offer a native bulk-export button for account lists or the leads you find inside them. You have two options: manual copy-paste or a third-party tool like Evaboot.

Manual copy-paste works for small lists — click through each lead, copy their name, title, and company into a spreadsheet. For anything over 50 leads, this is painful.

Third-party tools like Evaboot scrape Sales Navigator search results (both account lists and lead searches scoped to those lists) and export them as a CSV with name, title, company, LinkedIn URL, and enriched email. This is the standard path for teams running outbound at scale.

Without an export step, the leads you've identified inside your uploaded account list stay locked in Sales Navigator. Export lets you push them into your CRM, email sequencer, or calling tool.

Other Sales Navigator Advanced Features

The CSV upload is not the only feature LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced offers. This video compares Sales Navigator Advanced VS Core in detail.

It offers other features that can be useful for LinkedIn prospecting, like:

1. Smart Links
2. TeamLinks
3. Recommended Lead Lists

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Smart Links

Sales Navigator Smart Links are trackable content packages — combining slides, PDFs, or links — that sellers share with prospects, with Sales Navigator recording each viewer's identity and engagement so reps can follow up on genuine interest.

Sales Navigator Smart Links allows you to create Sales presentations and easily share and track your prospects' interactions with this content.

When sharing Smart Links, you can track your viewers' behavior and gain insights into what your prospects and customers are most interested in.

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator TeamLink

LinkedIn Sales Navigator TeamLink is a warm-introduction feature that surfaces, inside any Lead or Account Search, which people in the results are already first-degree connections of your teammates — giving your team a warmer path to outreach than a cold message.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator TeamLink allows sales teams to view their teammate's connections.

TeamLink shows if people in your search results are among your teammates' first-degree connections.

TeamLink harnesses the power of your entire team network to help you find the best path to a lead.

3. Recommended Lead Lists

Recommended Lead Lists are AI-generated prospect suggestions that Sales Navigator surfaces based on your saved searches, recent activity, and the types of leads your team has engaged with.

Sales Navigator analyzes your search patterns and existing account lists, then auto-generates a list of leads who match the profile of your ideal buyers. You can accept the list as-is, refine it with additional filters, or ignore it.

This is useful when you've exhausted your manually-built searches and need fresh leads without starting from scratch. The recommendations aren't always perfect, but they surface prospects you wouldn't have found otherwise.

Questions About LinkedIn Sales Navigator CSV Uploads

1. Can I upload Lead lists on Sales Navigator?

You can't import lead lists on LinkedIn Sales Navigator; Sales Navigator only allows Account lists. This feature would violate privacy rules, so LinkedIn can't offer it.

2. What to do after uploading my CSV?

Once you have uploaded your CSV file, the best thing to do is to find the decision-makers inside the companies in your list.

For that:

1. Go to lead search
2. Find the Workflow Section
3. Select your list in the account list filter
4. Add other filters to find decision-makers

Here is an example in which I'm retrieving all the CEOs of the companies in my CSV file.

3. What to do with collected data?

If you don't know how to use all the Company and Lead Data you found on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I have a hint: LinkedIn Lead generation. These LinkedIn Accounts of all the leads and companies are a golden key for your prospecting game.

Here are several tips to consider if you decide to go further:

• Find LinkedIn Profiles and send connection requests.
• If the profile is not open, send LinkedIn InMails using hyper-personalized message templates.
• Use the Evaboot Chrome extension or third-party automation tools to find your leads' account emails and phone numbers for multichannel outreach.

Conclusion

LinkedIn Sales Navigator's CSV upload feature is a powerful tool for efficient lead management and generation. Following the simple steps to upload and map your CSV files, you can ensure that your contact data is accurately imported and ready for immediate use.

Use these insights to streamline your lead generation process, save time, and achieve your sales goals.

Frequently asked questions