Re: "Technical documentation is the new sales"

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Some years ago, I was at an STC chapter meeting in Dallas when we heard 
from a docs manager from Texas Instruments.

He said that a few years prior to that, TI conducted a survey of its 
customers asking what differentiating factors had caused them to buy 
components from TI instead of its competitors.

The number one answer by a large margin was the quality of the 
documentation--they said that with TI products, they knew in advance 
exactly what each component could do and how to implement it.

He added that for about two or three years, the docs department was 
flying high--before things descended once more to the "afterthought" 
ranking it had historically "enjoyed."

In my case, I spent considerable time over the years doing marketing 
communications as well as tech docs. Thus, my customary mode was to 
create tech docs that could easily be used as sales collateral wherever 
possible. Essentially, this meant striving for such clarity and 
organization that people unfamiliar with the product could easily and 
quickly find what they needed to know--whether they were evaluating for 
purchase or merely a new user of the product itself.

In my view, this is a good practice anyway as a general proposition.

David