How to export contacts from Salesforce, with their LinkedIn URLs

Salesforce can give you a list of your contacts as a CSV or Excel file in a few minutes. Here’s how, including the LinkedIn profile links, which is the field most exports leave out.

Who to put in the list

The people who already know you: buyers and users at your customers, the champions of deals you won or lost, and former customers. When one of them moves to a new company, they are the warmest lead you’ll get there.

To export only the people behind deals you won, pick the report type Opportunities with Contact Roles instead, and filter on Stage equals Closed Won.

Export from Salesforce, step by step

Go to Reports → New Report, and pick the report type Contacts & Accounts.
Add the columns: name, account name, title, email and your LinkedIn field.
Run the report, then Export → Details Only → format .csv or .xlsx → Export.

Formatted reports, Data Loader files and Classic “Export Details” files work too.

Menu names can differ slightly between versions and languages of Salesforce.

Where’s the LinkedIn link?

Salesforce has no standard LinkedIn field: it’s a custom field, often called “LinkedIn Profile” or “LinkedIn URL”. Ask your Salesforce admin if you can’t find it.

The link must point at the person’s profile, like linkedin.com/in/name. Links from Sales Navigator (linkedin.com/sales/…), company pages and old /pub/ links don’t identify the profile: open it on LinkedIn and copy the address from there.

Check the file before you use it

One row per person, with the column names in the first row (title rows above them are fine).
A LinkedIn profile link for everyone you want to follow; name, company, job title and email help but aren’t required.
CSV, TSV or Excel (.xlsx or .xls), up to 10 MB and 20,000 rows.

See which of these contacts changed jobs

Upload the file to ChampionTracker. Every contact is checked straight away: anyone who already left the company in your Salesforce export shows up as a job change, and every contact is checked again every week.

Start free5 champions free, no card needed. Paid plans from €19 a month.

Other CRMs

Before you export: estimate how many of your past buyers changed jobs. Comparing tools? All job-change tools compared, or ChampionTracker next to UserGems, KeepSync, LeadIQ, Champify and Apollo.io.