LinkedIn Corp. is furthering its drive into the customer relationship management market with a new high-end edition of its Sales Navigator prospecting tool and improved sales follow-up functionality.

The top-of-the-line Sales Navigator Enterprise Edition increases the the number of monthly InMails that users can send to 50, adds improved manageability features like single sign-on and includes a collaborative feature called TeamLink Extend that lets people within an organization join their LinkedIn networks to a common pool.

“We’re turning up the volume to 11,” Doug Camplejohn, head of product for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, wrote in a draft blog post, channeling Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel.

LinkedIn has been seeking creative new ways to connect sales and marketing professionals with its nearly 470 million members without selling direct access to its database. Sales Navigator is described as a “social selling tool” that enables salespeople to leverage their own and shared connections to research and connect to prospects.

The product’s TeamLink feature, which aggregates the networks of all Sales Navigator seat holders in a company, is being extended to include employees who aren’t Sales Navigator subscribers. “That means, if you’re trying to reach a prospect, you can quickly see if anyone in your company has a connection with that person, and reach out to your colleague to ask for a warm introduction,” Camplejohn wrote. The first 1,000 seats of TeamLink Extend will be bundled free with every Enterprise Edition contract.

The social network is also rolling out features it picked up with last year’s acquisition of PointDrive LLC. PointDrive replaces multiple email attachments with a single, integrated web page that is not only more visually pleasing but also enables sellers to track how material is consumed and by whom. PointDrive will be integrated into Sales Navigator Team Edition and Enterprise Editions at no additional charge. Team Edition customers will be limited to 10 PointDrives per seat per month, while Enterprise Edition customers will get unlimited PointDrives along with additional reporting.

LinkedIn is also improving CRM integration with a feature it calls CRM Sync. “As you take notes, send InMails or even place calls from the Sales Navigator mobile app, you can now write them as activities to your CRM with a simple mouse click,” Camplejohn wrote. CRM Sync will tie into Salesforce.com Inc.’s CRM initially, with other platforms to be added later this year.

Another CRM-related enhancement is CRM Widgets, which integrate Sales Navigator profile details into Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics environments. Additional integration is coming for CRM products from Oracle, SAP SE, Hybris SE, Netsuite Inc., SugarCRM Inc., Hubspot Inc. and Zoho Corp.

Pricing information will be released today.

Image: LinkedIn