I have used LispWorks professionally at a few companies. As a lead in these companies, it usually goes down as follows:
Me: "Let's use Lisp for [reason]."
Them: [all usual arguments against Lisp]
Me: [convincing that Lisp is a good tool to solve this particular problem]
At this point I must say that when you're not in an executive position, Lisp is very hard to sell internally in companies. Not unexpected, but you can argue for it successfully at times. But it does get more difficult when price comes into the equation.
Them: [hesitantly convinced to use Lisp]
Me: "Let's use LispWorks for [obvious enterprise reasons: docs, GUI, delivery]."
Them: "Okay, what's the cost?"
Me: "About $10,000 per user for the platforms we are interested in running on."
Usually I can't get much further than this. They're already hesitant on Lisp, and now they're hearing that any new dev to the team will cost $10,000. None of these companies are against paying for tools, but it's definitely the case that they don't see a Lisp compiler/etc. on the same footing as other tools being purchased. What's worth more, a dev's yearly salary or some (from their POV) risky tools?
I'm sure it's a tough call for LispWorks, and frankly I don't know the right business approach to this problem. Of all the companies that I've been at that have used Lisp, none of them ever were convinced to invest completely. I can definitely say that if this OS/platform/bitness divide wasn't there, Lisp would be an easier sell. This is Mathematica's approach. Purchase a license and download/run on whatever OS. But I'm sure their customer base is orders of magnitude larger.
Cheers,
Robert Smith