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By Mark Ross and Michael Ventriello
This is why the marketing and sales alignment of vendor partners matters more with DSOs than in almost any other segment of dentistry, and why the order in which they operate matters just as much.
In the DSO environment, that approach almost always underperforms. Here’s why:
DSOs operate as enterprise healthcare organizations. Decisions affect dozens or hundreds of clinicians, standardized workflows, training systems, procurement contracts, and financial models. Every new technology, platform, or clinical solution introduces operational change.
The question for DSO leadership is rarely “Is this product good?” It is whether the organization is prepared to absorb that change consistently and defensibly at scale.
This is why marketing and sales alignment matters more in DSOs than in almost any other segment of dentistry, and why the order in which they operate matters just as much.
The distinction between DSOs and their vendor partners is critical here. DSOs are operators. They are responsible for clinical outcomes, compliance, consistency, and long-term enterprise performance.
Vendor partners should serve that operating system. Their success depends not only on winning approval, but on supporting adoption, behavior change, and sustained value long after a contract is signed.
Too often, vendors underestimate that reality.
Research from Harvard Business Review and Gartner consistently shows that modern B2B purchasing decisions involve six to ten stakeholders, each with different priorities and concerns.
Clinical leaders focus on outcomes and usability. Operations teams focus on workflow impact. Finance evaluates risk, cost, and scalability. Procurement prioritizes standardization and defensibility. Executive leadership evaluates alignment with long-term growth objectives.
In DSOs, these stakeholders are already forming opinions well before a sales conversation begins. Therefore, marketing’s primary role in the DSO space is not lead generation. It is market preparation.
Effective marketing defines the problem in terms that resonate across the entire organization. It frames the category so the solution feels familiar rather than experimental.
It establishes credibility through thought leadership, peer validation, and evidence that reflects real-world DSO environments. When marketing does this well, it reduces perceived risk, which Gartner research identifies as the single largest barrier to B2B purchase decisions.
When marketing has done its job, sales does not enter the conversation cold. The buyer understands the problem. The solution category feels legitimate. The vendor partner is already known. Sales becomes a guided evaluation, not a defensive pitch.
The inverse is also true. Vendor partners that prioritize sales before marketing tend to experience the same failure patterns repeatedly. Outreach feels cold and transactional. Sales cycles lengthen as stakeholders encounter the brand for the first time at different stages.
What’s more, internal resistance grows because there is no shared narrative explaining why change is necessary. Pilots stall. Adoption becomes uneven. Leadership questions whether the disruption was worth it.
This dynamic has been documented well beyond dentistry. In their seminal work “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing,” Kotler, Rackham, and Krishnaswamy describe how misalignment leads to wasted effort, inconsistent messaging, and fragile growth.
Gartner’s more recent research reinforces that buyers now complete a majority of their evaluation independently, relying on content, peer input, and market signals before engaging sales at all.
DSOs exemplify this behavior.
The vendor partners that succeed consistently in the DSO space understand that marketing is not a promotional function. It is an operating system.
Positioning is clear enough that DSO leaders can repeat it internally without reinterpretation. Proof travels across regions because it reflects the realities of multi-site dentistry, not idealized case studies. Messaging works in a boardroom, an operations meeting, and a clinical discussion without changing its meaning.
Sales then plays a complementary and vital role. Representatives localize the narrative. They adapt it to regional workflows, specialty mixes, staffing constraints, and rollout timelines.
Instead of persuading, sales teams help DSO leaders make decisions they already feel confident defending.
Alignment also changes how success is measured. In DSOs, demand quality matters far more than demand volume. A signed agreement without adoption is not a win.
Marketing and sales must share responsibility for what happens after the contract. Such as how quickly a solution is implemented, how consistently it is used, and whether it delivers the outcomes that justified the decision in the first place.
Harvard Business Review has repeatedly shown that organizations that align around shared revenue outcomes outperform those that optimize individual functions.
When sales dominate internal conversations on either side of the table, the consequences are predictable. Decisions become reactive. Discounting replaces differentiation. Messaging fragments across regions. Adoption slows.
Then, DSOs experience vendor fatigue. Vendor partners experience stalled growth. None of this occurs because teams are not working hard. It happens because the system is misaligned.
The DSOs that scale most effectively, and the vendor partners that become long-term collaborators rather than interchangeable suppliers, operate differently. They treat marketing and sales as a single revenue system designed to reduce risk, build confidence, and support adoption at scale. They invest as much in clarity as they do in activity.
As dentistry continues to consolidate, that gap will only widen. DSOs will increasingly favor vendor partners who understand how enterprise decisions are actually made. Vendor partners that help DSOs decide, deploy, and scale with confidence will continue to win.
In the DSO era, marketing and sales alignment is more than a best practice. It is a requirement.
About the Authors
Michael Ventriello, the co-founder and Chief Communications Officer of Personify Group, advises dental manufacturers and healthcare innovators on messaging, public relations, marketing communications, thought leadership, and go-to-market strategies. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.
