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The Hidden 2-Month Sales Navigator Trial Most People Don't Know About
LinkedIn's standard Sales Navigator free trial is 30 days. It's enough to get a feel for the platform but not nearly enough time to build a proper prospecting system, identify your best-performing search combinations, and generate enough pipeline to make a confident "buy or don't buy" decision.
There is a way to double that to 60 days — but it's not advertised on any public LinkedIn landing page. It runs through LinkedIn's referral system: if someone with an active Sales Navigator subscription sends you their referral link, you receive a 2-month free trial instead of the standard one month. That's 60 full days with complete access to advanced search filters, 50 InMail credits, lead list management, and real-time activity alerts.
How to Get the 2-Month Sales Navigator Trial via Referral
The referral system is built into Sales Navigator — any active subscriber can generate a referral link from within their account and share it with you. Here's the exact process from both sides.
What the existing Sales Navigator user does
Open their Sales Navigator account
They need an active, paid Sales Navigator subscription — Core, Advanced, or Advanced Plus. The referral feature is available on all tiers.
Click their profile icon → select "Referrals"
In the top-right corner of Sales Navigator, they click their profile photo or initials to open the account menu. "Referrals" appears as an option in this dropdown. Clicking it opens the referral centre.
Search for your profile and send the referral link
In the referral centre, they type your name into the search bar, find your LinkedIn profile, and send you the unique referral link. The link arrives via LinkedIn notification or message. The referral link is specific to you — it won't work for anyone else.
What you do
Click the referral link
Click the unique referral link your contact shared with you. It redirects you to the Sales Navigator trial signup page, already pre-configured for the 2-month duration. The page will clearly show "2 months free" rather than the standard "1 month free."
Complete signup with your credit card
LinkedIn requires a credit card to activate the trial. You will not be charged during the 2-month trial period. The subscription automatically converts to a paid plan at the end of the trial unless you cancel before it expires. Set a calendar reminder for day 55 — that gives you a week to decide before the billing date.
Full access begins immediately
From the moment signup is complete, you have full access to Sales Navigator Core — all 30+ advanced search filters, 50 InMail credits, lead and account list management, real-time alerts, Account IQ, and saved search notifications. The clock starts now. Use the strategy in the next section to ensure no day is wasted.
What to Do During Your 60-Day Trial: A Week-by-Week Plan
An extended trial is only valuable if you treat it as a structured evaluation — not a casual explore. Your goal during the 60 days is to generate enough real pipeline data to make the post-trial subscription decision based on ROI, not intuition. Here's the framework.
Define your Ideal Customer Profile with precision before touching the search filters: target industries, job titles, seniority levels, company size ranges, geography, and any technology or signal-based qualifiers. The quality of everything that follows depends entirely on this step. Then explore the advanced filter set — run test searches and compare results across different filter combinations to understand which signals produce the cleanest, most relevant lead sets for your specific ICP.
With your ICP filters refined, systematically build lead and account lists — saving leads, segmenting by outreach strategy, and setting up saved searches that notify you weekly of new matches. Use Account IQ to surface company intelligence for your highest-priority targets. Export your best lists via Evaboot (covered below) to get clean, enriched CSVs with verified emails outside the platform.
Launch your outreach sequences using the enriched lists. Use InMail strategically — prioritise Open Profile prospects first (no credits), then deploy InMail credits on your highest-value non-connected targets. Track connection acceptance rates, InMail reply rates, and email response rates. This data is your ROI benchmark for the post-trial decision.
Tally your results: leads generated, conversations started, pipeline created. Calculate a simple ROI — if one qualified opportunity was created during the trial, and your average deal value is above $100/month, Sales Navigator has already paid for itself many times over. By day 55, make your cancel-or-continue decision before the billing date.
Core features to master during the trial
Advanced lead and account search
Sales Navigator's 30+ filters go far beyond the free LinkedIn search engine. Seniority, headcount growth, funding recency, job change in last 90 days, technologies used — these signals let you target prospects at the exact moment they're most likely to be receptive. Invest time in Boolean search operators to combine filters precisely.
Lead lists and saved searches
Save up to 10,000 leads and accounts in segmented lists. Set up saved searches that notify you weekly when new profiles matching your ICP appear in the database — turning Sales Navigator into an automated prospecting engine that adds new leads to your pipeline without any manual searching.
Real-time activity alerts
Job changes, company news, post activity, and funding alerts on your saved leads give you the timing intelligence that transforms cold outreach into warm, context-rich messages. "I saw [Company] just announced X" is always more effective than a generic opener — and Sales Navigator surfaces these triggers automatically.
Account IQ
Account IQ provides a full AI-generated briefing on any company in seconds — business model summary, revenue estimates, competitive landscape, key decision-makers, and AI-suggested pitch angles. Use it to personalise your first touchpoint to any account without hours of manual research.
InMail credits (50/month)
50 InMail credits per month allows direct messaging to 2nd and 3rd-degree connections without a connection request. Use them strategically — prioritise Open Profile targets first (free), then deploy InMail only on high-value non-connected prospects where a connection request alone is unlikely to be accepted.
Lead recommendations
As you save leads and interact with profiles, Sales Navigator's algorithm learns your ICP and recommends new leads matching similar patterns weekly. These recommendations often surface relevant profiles you would never have found through manual searching — treat the weekly recommendations as a supplementary prospecting channel.
Warm up your Sales Navigator prospects before you send a single message
Sales Navigator finds the right people. PowerIn makes sure they already know your name when you reach out — through automated, AI-personalised comments on their LinkedIn posts days before your connection request or InMail arrives. The warm-up that doubles reply rates and stretches every InMail credit further.
How to Export Your Sales Navigator Leads with Evaboot
Sales Navigator deliberately restricts bulk contact export — you can save leads to lists inside the platform, but you can't download them as a CSV with contact information directly. To turn your Sales Navigator lead lists into portable, actionable data for cold email campaigns and CRM import, you need Evaboot.
Evaboot adds an "Export Leads" button inside Sales Navigator, extracts your lists to clean CSVs, appends verified email addresses, and removes false positives — leads that appeared in your search results but don't actually match your filter criteria. Here's the 5-step process.
Sign up at evaboot.com. Evaboot starts at $9/month on annual billing — a negligible cost relative to the Sales Navigator subscription, and one that pays for itself immediately in data cleaning time saved.
From your Evaboot dashboard, click "Get Chrome Extension" and install it from the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, it adds an "Export Leads" button to the top of every Sales Navigator search, lead list, account search, account list, and saved search page.
Evaboot works across all Sales Navigator page types: Lead Searches, Lead Lists, Account Searches, Account Lists, and Saved Searches. You can also export specific sub-tabs within a lead list — for example, only the leads who "Changed jobs in the past 90 days" from a saved list.
When you click the export button, you're redirected to the Evaboot dashboard. Choose whether you want Evaboot to find and append email addresses for each lead (adds per-lead email finding credits). Name your export for reference, then click "Export leads." The estimated completion time appears immediately — most exports complete within minutes to a few hours depending on list size.
Once extraction is complete, you receive an email with a download link. The CSV contains cleaned first names, last names, job titles, and company names — all standardised automatically. It also includes a "No Match Reasons" column that flags any leads Evaboot detected don't actually match your search filters, so you can remove false positives before importing to your CRM or cold email tool.
After the Trial: Which Sales Navigator Plan Is Right for You?
If your 60-day trial generates measurable pipeline, the post-trial decision comes down to which tier matches your workflow and team size. Here's a straightforward comparison of the three Sales Navigator plans.
Core
The standard individual plan. Everything you used during the trial — all 30+ advanced filters, 50 InMails, lead and account lists, real-time alerts, Account IQ, and saved searches. The right choice for solo SDRs, founders, and individual contributors doing structured prospecting.
- 30+ advanced search filters
- 50 InMail credits / month
- Up to 10,000 saved leads and accounts
- Real-time alerts on saved leads
- AI lead recommendations weekly
- Account IQ company briefings
- Saved searches with weekly alerts
Advanced
Everything in Core plus the team collaboration layer — TeamLink warm intro visibility, Salesforce/Dynamics CRM sync, Smart Links content tracking, CSV account upload, and usage reporting. Only adds meaningful value when two or more people share the platform.
- Everything in Core
- TeamLink — warm intro paths via team connections
- Salesforce + Microsoft Dynamics sync
- Smart Links with engagement tracking
- CSV upload for bulk account import
- Team usage reporting and admin controls
Advanced Plus
The enterprise tier — full CRM integration with real-time contact updates, TeamLink Extend (warm intro paths across the entire company, not just the sales team), and advanced LinkedIn Ads campaign management. Sold on annual contracts; no public monthly pricing.
- Everything in Advanced
- TeamLink Extend — entire company network visibility
- Full CRM sync + real-time contact updates
- Advanced LinkedIn Ads campaign manager
- Enterprise admin and SSO
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I activate a LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial?
For the standard 30-day trial, go to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator page and click "Start your free trial" — you'll need a credit card. For the 2-month trial, you need a referral link from someone with an active Sales Navigator subscription. They generate the link from their account (profile icon → Referrals), search for your name, and send it to you. Click the link and follow the signup steps to activate 60 days of free access.
Can I get a free trial if I've had one before?
LinkedIn's standard policy is one free trial per user. However, a referral link from an existing subscriber sometimes circumvents this restriction — particularly if a significant period has passed since your previous trial. This is not guaranteed and depends on LinkedIn's current trial eligibility rules, which can change. If your standard trial is blocked, a referral link is worth trying before assuming you're ineligible.
What happens after my Sales Navigator free trial ends?
Your subscription automatically converts to the paid plan you selected during signup — either monthly or annual billing. You'll be charged on the day after your trial ends. Set a calendar reminder for day 55 of your 60-day trial (or day 25 of a standard 30-day trial) to give yourself a week to review results, make your decision, and cancel if needed before the billing date. Cancelling after billing has already been processed may not result in a refund.
Are there different versions of Sales Navigator trials?
Yes. The standard self-serve trial is 30 days for Sales Navigator Core. The referral trial (the subject of this guide) is 60 days, also for Core. Enterprise-level trials for Advanced Plus are handled through direct contact with LinkedIn's sales team and are not self-service — they typically involve a custom demo and negotiated access period. LinkedIn occasionally runs promotional trials of varying lengths, but these aren't consistently available.
What are the main benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
The three most impactful features relative to the free LinkedIn account: 30+ advanced search filters that allow precise ICP targeting (including seniority, headcount, funding, and job change recency); real-time alerts on saved leads that surface timing-based outreach opportunities automatically; and lead and account list management that lets you organise, annotate, and track up to 10,000 prospects in a structured system. For anyone doing systematic B2B outbound sales, these three features alone make Sales Navigator the minimum viable prospecting infrastructure.
Sales Navigator finds your prospects. PowerIn makes them warm before you reach out.
The most impactful thing you can do during your 60-day trial is pair Sales Navigator's targeting with PowerIn's warm-up layer. Automatically engage with your prospects' LinkedIn content before your connection requests or InMails arrive — so every outreach lands with a familiar name, not a cold one. Higher reply rates. More InMail refunds. Better pipeline from the same list.