Dick Spencer Case Study

Dick Spencer

The assigned case centralized around Dick Spencer who worked for Tri-American, an US aluminum producer, for 14 years. In the beginning of his time at the organization, Dick was very successful as a salesman. However, everything had become very difficult for him since he worked as a manager. This paper will analyze not only the critical factors that contributed to his salesman’s success but also the main reasons for his failure as a manager, especially during the time he was a plant manager of Modrow.

The very first factor that makes Dick Spencer successful as a salesman is his MBA degree. Researchers of University of Malaya proved that having a MBA degree would significantly increase the candidate’s overall skills and knowledge (Ainin & Suhana, 2009). Skills such as interpersonal and oral communication which are considered very important for a salesperson will improve after studying MBA. Specifically, the mean score of interpersonal skills increased from 2.25 to 3.6 while mean score of oral communication rose from 2.38 to 3.72. These improvements after obtaining an MBA degree could help Dick Spencer success in his sale job. In addition, Dick was considered as an attractive salesperson by his subordinates. A study showed that a positive appearance would give a positive effect on the salesperson’s performance (Aheame, Gruen, & Jarvis, 1999). According to the study, this relationship happened because high attractiveness would lead to higher communication ability, likeability, expertise and trustworthiness. Furthermore, Dick showed that he is a self-efficient employee because he refused to use his relationship with the president of the company to promote himself. This factor contributed to his success because researchers found that self-efficacy was one of the most critical traits of a successful salesperson (Byunghwa, Youngchan & Richard, 2011). Finally, a study proved that if a salesperson was in a high competitive working environment,...