About National Radiology & Diagnostic Imaging Network
the radiology network is one of New Zealand's leading independent radiology providers, operating a network of imaging centres and collection sites across both the North and South Islands. The group delivers a full spectrum of diagnostic imaging services — from general X-ray and ultrasound to advanced MRI and CT — and relies on a consistent pipeline of GP and specialist referrals to maintain patient volumes across its regional locations. Its clinical reputation is strong, but commercial growth is inherently dependent on the depth and geographic breadth of its referring clinic relationships.
The New Zealand diagnostic imaging market operates within a referral-driven model where GP practices are the primary patient gateway. Competitive dynamics are shaped by turnaround times, imaging quality, patient communication, and the strength of the personal relationships that radiologists and account managers maintain with referring clinicians. In regional markets particularly, the ability to maintain active referral relationships is constrained by the travel requirements placed on account management teams — creating natural coverage gaps that competitors with stronger regional presence can exploit.
the radiology network's referral network had historically grown in direct proportion to its account management team's geographic reach. Regions accessible by account managers had strong referral pipelines; regions beyond their practical travel range — including significant portions of the South Island — remained largely untapped despite representing substantial patient volume opportunity. Scaling the account management headcount to cover the full NZ GP landscape was neither efficient nor practical, making a digital-first referral development model the only viable path to network expansion.
Executive Summary
LVRA's outbound programme opened 81 qualified GP referral meetings across 8 New Zealand regions in 6 months, converting 29 into active new referring clinics and growing the radiology network's referring network by 18%. The programme achieved a 22% cold email reply rate from practice owners and managers, established coverage across 3 previously unserved South Island regions, and produced a mapped database of 890 GP practices for ongoing outreach — fundamentally extending the commercial reach of the account management team without adding headcount.
What needed
to change.
the radiology network's referral pipeline was limited by account manager geography. Referral relationships existed where account managers could physically travel — leaving hundreds of regional clinics unreached.
No digital outreach channel existed to reach GP practice owners or practice managers outside major metropolitan areas. The South Island in particular had significant untapped referring clinic potential.
Scaling referral network coverage without scaling the account management headcount required a digital model that could reach the full geographic footprint of NZ general practice.
How we built the solution.
Every LVRA engagement runs through four structured phases — each one feeding the next.
Discovery & Audit
Phase 01
LVRA audited the radiology network's existing referral development process — mapping how new referring clinics had historically been identified and onboarded, where account manager geographic coverage ended, and what data existed on current versus potential referring clinics. The audit confirmed that referral relationship records were account-manager-held rather than systemically captured, creating a knowledge concentration risk and a significant blind spot on untapped regional opportunity.
We assessed what outreach infrastructure existed — CRM capability, email tooling, LinkedIn presence — and identified that no digital outreach channel of any kind had been used to approach GP practices. All new referral relationships had originated from in-person visits, conference attendance, or peer recommendation. This confirmed that the entire addressable market beyond account manager geography was effectively unreached.
The waste identification component focused on the Southern regions: Marlborough, Nelson, Canterbury, Otago, and Southland were mapped against the radiology network's collection site locations to identify the gap between geographic footprint and active referring clinic coverage. Three South Island regions emerged as the highest-priority targets — they had the radiology network sites within patient-convenient distance but almost zero active referring relationships.
Market Intelligence
Phase 02
LVRA built a comprehensive database of 890 GP practices across New Zealand using Medical Council registration data cross-referenced with LinkedIn and publicly available practice information. Each practice was assessed against four variables: proximity to a the radiology network collection or imaging site, practice size by GP headcount, referral volume indicators, and whether a prior account manager relationship existed — producing a tiered priority list for outreach sequencing.
Two distinct buyer personas were mapped and researched through qualitative analysis of GP practice decision-making structures: practice owners, who held clinical authority and made imaging provider decisions based on clinical quality and patient experience; and practice managers, who were often the operational gatekeepers responsible for administration, referral workflow, and day-to-day provider management. Each persona required a materially different value proposition and messaging approach.
Competitor analysis mapped which competing radiology providers were actively marketing to GP practices digitally, assessed the messaging frameworks they were using with clinical audiences, and identified the messaging angles — particularly around turnaround time, imaging quality, and patient communication protocols — where the radiology network held demonstrable competitive advantages that had not been articulated in any existing outreach communications.
Strategy Design
Phase 03
LVRA designed a two-persona outreach architecture with completely distinct sequences for practice owners and practice managers. Practice owner sequences led with clinical quality framing — imaging turnaround times, radiologist credentials, reporting accuracy, and patient experience standards — because clinical outcomes were the primary decision driver for GP principals. Practice manager sequences led with operational efficiency: seamless referral workflows, patient communication protocols, and the administrative simplicity of working with the radiology network's booking systems.
Regional deployment was sequenced in priority order, beginning with the three South Island regions identified in the audit as highest-opportunity and lowest current penetration. Each regional wave was timed to align with the radiology network's account management capacity to conduct the discovery meetings that LVRA's appointment setting would generate — ensuring that the pipeline created was immediately actionable without creating a backlog that would allow warm prospects to cool.
A full appointment-setting protocol was designed to govern how LVRA would manage positive replies: qualification criteria for what constituted a genuine meeting opportunity, the structured briefing the radiology network's regional managers would receive ahead of each meeting, and a handover process that ensured meeting outcomes were captured and fed back into the outreach database to refine priority targeting over time.
Launch & Optimise
Phase 04
Outreach launched across the three priority South Island regions simultaneously, with practice owner and practice manager sequences running in parallel from week one. The first qualified meetings were booked within 11 days of launch, with LVRA managing all inbound replies, qualifying responses against agreed criteria, and booking meetings directly into the radiology network's regional manager calendars without requiring the client team to manage outreach responses.
Weekly performance reviews assessed reply rates by region, persona, and messaging variant. The clinical quality framing for practice owners outperformed the operational efficiency framing significantly in the first two weeks, prompting a rapid optimisation of the practice manager sequence to incorporate a stronger patient outcome element before leading with administrative efficiency — improving practice manager reply rates by approximately one-third.
By the end of month six, 81 qualified meetings had been conducted across all 8 target regions, with 29 converting to active referring clinic status. The South Island programme alone delivered 24 new clinic relationships across the three previously unserved regions — validating the geographic expansion model and producing the 890-practice database as a structured asset for ongoing account management use.
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How it was built, channel by channel.
GP Practice Database Construction
LVRA assembled a verified database of 890 GP practices across New Zealand by combining Medical Council registration records with LinkedIn practice page data and publicly available practice information. Each record was enriched with practice size, proximity to the radiology network sites, regional classification, and an initial tier ranking based on estimated referral volume potential. The database was structured for ongoing CRM use — giving the radiology network's account management team a permanent structured asset for referral network development.
Practices were stratified into three outreach tiers: high-priority practices within immediate proximity to a the radiology network site with no existing referral relationship; medium-priority practices with some existing contact but low referral volume; and long-term pipeline practices in regions where the radiology network had no current site but planned future expansion.
Persona-Specific Outreach Sequences
Separate multi-step outreach sequences were written for practice owners and practice managers, with distinct messaging architectures and value proposition hierarchies for each persona. Practice owner sequences opened with clinical credentialing — turnaround time benchmarks, radiologist qualifications, and imaging quality standards — before transitioning to patient experience and referral workflow in steps two and three. The clinical frame was non-negotiable for GP principals; commercial messaging in the opening message reliably suppressed reply rates.
Practice manager sequences prioritised operational efficiency: simplified referral submission, patient booking confirmation processes, and the administrative workload reduction that the radiology network's systems enabled. Steps two and three introduced patient communication quality as a supporting clinical credibility signal — reinforcing the overall trust case from an operational rather than clinical angle.
All sequences were written in plain, professional clinical language consistent with how the radiology network's account managers communicated — ensuring outreach felt continuous with, rather than separate from, the relationship being established. Reply management protocols ensured every positive response was acknowledged within two hours and a meeting booking issued within 24 hours.
Regional Appointment Setting Operations
LVRA operated as the full appointment-setting function for the programme — managing all reply traffic, qualifying responses against agreed criteria, booking meetings directly into the radiology network's regional manager calendars, and issuing structured pre-meeting briefings covering the practice background, the specific decision-maker involved, and the conversation history that had led to the meeting. This removed all administrative burden from the radiology network's internal team and ensured no qualified response was lost in transit.
Regional deployment sequencing ensured that meeting volumes in each region were matched to the account management capacity available to conduct them. LVRA's weekly reporting gave the radiology network full visibility of the pipeline in each region — how many outreach contacts were active, how many positive replies were in progress, and how many meetings were confirmed — enabling proactive capacity planning across the regional management team.
Performance Measurement and Network Tracking
LVRA tracked referral network expansion across three metrics: total meetings conducted, new clinics converted to active referring status, and regional coverage improvement measured against the pre-programme baseline. Monthly reporting cross-referenced outreach activity with referral volume data from the radiology network's internal systems, enabling attribution of new referral volumes to specific clinics identified and converted through the programme.
The 890-practice database was maintained as a live asset throughout the programme — removing converted clinics from active outreach, tagging non-responders for re-engagement after a defined interval, and continuously replenishing the pipeline from the tier-two and tier-three priority lists. By programme end, the database had been converted from a campaign list into a structured account management tool with complete contact history, meeting outcomes, and referral relationship status for every practice in scope.
3 pillars. One integrated system.
Each strategic pillar was designed to feed the next — creating compounding returns across every channel activated.
The numbers
that matter.
Every metric comes from verified campaign data — attributable to specific strategic decisions made during this engagement. No projections. No vanity numbers.
What this engagement taught us.
These principles carry forward into every engagement that follows — applicable well beyond National Radiology & Diagnostic Imaging Network's specific context.
Industry
Radiology / Diagnostic Imaging
Market
New Zealand
Duration
Ongoing engagement
Geographic constraints on referral growth can only be broken with digital.
Account manager headcount drives account manager geography. The only way to cover New Zealand's full GP practice landscape without proportionally scaling the team is a digital-first outreach model.
Clinicians respond to clinical outcomes data, not commercial messaging.
Outreach to GP practice owners that leads with turnaround times, imaging quality, and patient experience converts. Outreach that leads with commercial relationship benefits does not. The clinical frame must come first.
Regional coverage requires systematic database building — not guesswork.
Identifying the right GP practices in regional New Zealand required combining Medical Council data with LinkedIn mapping. Guessing which regions to prioritise without data leads to wasted effort in low-potential areas.
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