Sales Navigator Boolean cheat sheet

The five operators that matter

Sales Navigator boolean search supports five operators: AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and double quotes. That's it. Every other 'advanced operator' you've seen circulating is a myth.

AND — both terms must appear. Default behavior when you separate words with spaces inside a field, but explicit AND is more reliable across fields.

OR — either term qualifies. Critical for capturing job-title variants.

NOT — exclude. Capitalization matters: lowercase 'not' is treated as a search word.

Parentheses — group expressions. Sales Navigator evaluates inside-out.

Double quotes — exact phrase match. "chief revenue officer" matches CROs but not 'revenue officer chief.'

Job-title boolean recipes

VP Sales / RevOps: ("VP Sales" OR "Vice President Sales" OR "Head of Sales" OR "Chief Revenue Officer" OR CRO) AND NOT (Engineering OR Product OR Marketing)

Founder / Solo CEO: (Founder OR Co-Founder OR "CEO") AND NOT (Co-CEO OR "former CEO")

Decision-maker SDR managers: ("Director of Sales Development" OR "VP Sales Development" OR "Head of SDR") AND NOT (Manager OR Lead)

Marketing leadership: (CMO OR "Chief Marketing" OR "VP Marketing" OR "Head of Marketing") AND NOT (Junior OR Coordinator OR Specialist)

Company keyword recipes

Recently funded SaaS: Use Sales Navigator's company filter for Industry = Software, then Keywords = ("Series B" OR "Series C" OR "Series D").

Hiring SDRs: Keywords = ("hiring SDR" OR "hiring sales development" OR "now hiring sales"). Pulls companies announcing SDR roles.

Specific tech stack: Keywords = ("Salesforce admin" OR "HubSpot admin") hits companies posting jobs requiring those tools.

Industry vertical with carve-outs: ("professional services" OR consultancy) AND NOT (legal OR law OR attorney)

Field-specific behaviors to know

Title field: Boolean works. The title field is the most-supported.

Keywords field: Boolean works but searches across profile, title, headline, and current role description. Noisier results.

Company name field: Boolean works for current company names but not historical roles unless you toggle past company.

Location field: Boolean does NOT work in the geography field. Use the dropdown filter.

School field: Boolean works for alumni targeting ("Stanford" OR "Harvard" OR "MIT").

The saved-search workflow

Convert your ICP into 5–10 saved searches with overlapping but distinct boolean queries. Sales Navigator lets you save up to 50.

Each saved search emails you new matches weekly. Layer that with trigger events (recent funding, hiring spikes) and you have a self-replenishing prospect queue.

Pipe saved searches into Infonet to convert the queue into AI-personalized outreach. See the full Sales Navigator guide.

FAQ

Why doesn't NOT work in my search?

NOT must be capitalized in Sales Navigator. Lowercase 'not' is treated as a search keyword.

Can I use wildcards (*) in Sales Navigator?

No. Sales Navigator does not support wildcard or fuzzy matching. Spell out variants explicitly with OR.

How many results does Sales Navigator return per search?

2,500 maximum per search. Use Boolean refinement to keep your searches under that ceiling — or break them into multiple saved searches.