Hosts & Show
About our hosts:
John W. Asher III
CEO Asher Strategies
John is an experienced international speaker on sales, sales management and marketing for Vistage, a worldwide network of CEOs.
He co-founded an engineering firm in 1986. He and his team grew the company at a compounded growth rate of 42% per year for 14 straight years. During his tenure as CEO, the company acquired seven other engineering and software development companies. His team sold the company in 1997 after growing annual revenue to $165m.
In 1998, he co-founded a sales advisory services practice that has grown into a global leader in sales strategies. These strategies include sales, sales management and marketing. His team has trained over 80,000 Executives, Salespeople and other customer facing managers in 22 countries over the past 19 years.
His team has advised a number of Global Fortune 5000 companies including Goldman Sachs, General Dynamics, Alibaba, China Mobile and 1400 other small and medium sized companies.
In his first career, John was the captain of two nuclear submarines like the Dallas in the movie “Hunt for Red October”. He completed his Navy career in the Pentagon as the Program Manager (buyer) of a $2B nuclear submarine combat systems program.
John is a graduate of United States Naval Academy with degrees in mathematics and nuclear engineering. He has a MBA from George Washington University.
He is the author of numerous sales training manuals and “Doing Business with the West”, published in China in 2012, and “Close Deals Faster” in 2017.
Awards
- The #1 rated Vistage Speaker on sales
- Vistage Lifetime Speaker Achievement Award
- In the top 2% rating of 1,000 plus Vistage Speakers
Kyla O'Connell
VP of Sales and Marketing
Senior Partner and Trainer
- Kyla is a top executive and partner at Ascher, a sales and marketing consulting company based in Washington, D.C.
- After a successful sales career in golf, resorts and hospitality, in 2003, Lyla founded a boutique consulting firm, Driven Sales and Marketing. She merged her company with Asher in 2006.
- In addition to managing sales and marketing at Asher, Kyla is a senior sales training facilitator and coach.
- Since 2010, Kyla has been training and coaching sales people worldwide on how to use a repeatable sales prcoess to quickly close new business.
- Kyla has restructured sales teams and departments for companies nationwide.
