That's a big area to discuss. Yes, chip manufacturers had large sales departments. Magazines like Electronics had articles discussing new chips (and other components) as well as lots of ads explaining the benefits of new products. (@TubeTimeUS posts a lot of these old ads on Twitter [1])
Intel in particular put a huge effort into support tools for microprocessors (assemblers, libraries, development systems, documentation, etc). They worked closely with customers to get the chips adopted. For instance, "Operation Crush" was an effort to get customers to use the 8086 instead of the Motorola 68000.
For more info on Operation Crush, I rec. John Doerr's Measure What Matters. The beginning of the book outlines the intense competition Intel had with Motorola, Intel's strategy, and Andy Grove's sales/business philosophies.
Those ads are a trip! It looks to have been like the Cambrian explosion of every kind of chip manufacturer and chip type back then. It must have been very exciting, and very seat-of-your-pants time -- amazing to imagine.
Intel in particular put a huge effort into support tools for microprocessors (assemblers, libraries, development systems, documentation, etc). They worked closely with customers to get the chips adopted. For instance, "Operation Crush" was an effort to get customers to use the 8086 instead of the Motorola 68000.
[1] e.g. A Zilog ad explaining the benefits of the Z-80: https://twitter.com/tubetimeus/status/1276912575913984001
A long, interesting thread of component ads from 1967: https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1280643791037140992