LinkedIn Corp. is stepping up efforts to woo vendors of customer relationship management (CRM) applications to embrace its Sales Navigator social selling tool with a new partner program that enables vendors to integrate Sales Navigator functionality directly into their applications.

LinkedIn previously supported such functionality in Salesforce.com Inc. and Microsoft Dynamics. Earlier this year the company added automatic synchronization of Sales Navigator with Salesforce records and integration with Google’s Gmail.

Initial partners in the new program include SAP SE, Oracle, NetSuite, SugarCRM Inc. and HubSpot Inc. “We plan to expand this list over time,” wrote Doug Camplejohn (@camplejohn), head of products for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, in a blog post. “We expect to see the first integrations roll out in the first half of next year.”

Initial integration will enable partners to match the widget capabilities that are currently supported in Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. This lets salespeople see LinkedIn profile information on lead and account pages, save leads and accounts to Sales Navigator, connect to leads on LinkedIn and send LinkedIn InMails directly.

LinkedIn is looking to its customers for guidance on which partners to select, Camplejohn said in an e-mail interview. “For the initial round of partners, we determined which CRM system integrations could help make Sales Navigator more useful for customers who are not already using Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics,” he said. “We hope to learn from the initial set of integrations, and then expand the program after they roll out.”

Microsoft’s plans to acquire the leading professional social network has sparked some concerns about whether data on LinkedIn’s 433 million members, which the company has guarded carefully, will be opened up to broader use by marketers, but Camplejohn said nothing will change in that respect. “We are a members-first organization, and take our members’ privacy very seriously,” he said. “We are always thoughtful and methodical about our approach when it comes to entering partnerships or launching products that impact both members and customers.

“We don’t believe there needs to be a trade-off between creating good experiences for members vs. customers,” he added. “Our goal is to strike the right balance in such a way that both parties win.”

Image courtesy LinkedIn