I got into this business through the training side, and I never left it.
Fourteen years teaching, twelve in insurance, four of them running my own State Farm agency. I still lead the team at Wyant Insurance here in Charlottesville. Around thirty thousand people have sat through something I built.
I started out teaching high school, which is the least glamorous and most useful training I have ever had.
A room of teenagers will tell you immediately when you are boring. They will not be polite about it, they will not wait for the evaluation form, and no amount of subject matter expertise will save you. You learn to hold attention or you learn to dread Mondays. Everything I know about running a room I learned there.
Insurance came next. I sold, then I led, then I owned. I ran the office at Wyant Insurance here in Charlottesville, left at the end of 2016 to open my own agency in Roanoke, and spent four years recruiting people, training them, coaching them, holding them accountable, and living with the results every month. That is the part of my background that matters most when I am standing in front of a team. I have made the calls, missed the numbers, and had the hard conversation with a producer who was not going to make it.
In 2021 I came back to lead that same team, and I still do it. Not as a consultant. I am in it, week to week, with the same people. That team has finished at or near the top of the country for years, which was the work of a lot of people and not of any one of us. What it means for you is that everything I teach is currently being run somewhere, by a real team, with my name on the result. I am not describing what used to work.
What I kept running into was the same problem in every office. Rooms full of capable people, sitting through material that was accurate and forgettable. Good producers handed information when what they needed was a way to practice. I have watched an enormous amount of well-made curriculum die in a binder.
So that became the work. Not writing better content, though I write a lot of it. Building the thing around the content that makes it survive the week. A cadence people can keep. Reps that happen before the customer is in front of them. A standard the owner asks about on Monday morning. That is the difference between a training day everyone enjoyed and a team that sells differently in ninety days.
& 2016
Lead the sales and service team at Wyant Insurance, week to week, alongside the training work. Recruiting, onboarding, coaching, daily standards, and production.
- First in the country for multiline production in 2016 and again in 2025
- Second in the country in 2023 and 2024
- Led the same office in 2016 before opening my own agency, and returned in 2021
Design and deliver live, virtual, and in-person training for insurance agents, agency leaders, and their teams, across sales execution, customer experience, leadership, and operational consistency.
- Around 30,000 agents and team members trained
- 700+ live sessions delivered in the past year
- Lead curriculum architect for an 18-day instructor-led onboarding and certification program
- Build facilitator guides, learner workbooks, role-play scenarios, assessments, and certification standards end to end
- Coach agents and team leaders on recruiting, onboarding, accountability, sales conversations, and daily activity standards
Owned and operated a State Farm agency. Customer acquisition, retention, team development, production, service standards, and everything else that lands on the owner. Recruited, trained, and held a team accountable to activity and production. Advised households and small-business owners on property and casualty, life, and financial services.
Completed the agent development pathway while preparing to launch an agency. Agency operations, leadership, sales management, compliance, and business planning.
Worked with individuals, families, and local business owners on insurance and financial services needs. Prospecting, needs analysis, quoting, cross-selling, and relationship management.
Where I learned to hold a room, build a lesson that lands, and tell the difference between a group that understands something and a group that is nodding.
A new-hire onboarding and certification program that takes someone with no industry experience and makes them a functional agency team member. Core systems, product knowledge, sales, service, workflows, practice, testing, and a certification standard at the end.
Consultative selling from end to end. Needs discovery, the customer conversation, presentation, closing, onboarding, documentation, referrals, retention, and the daily habits underneath all of it.
Auto, homeowners, renters, condo, manufactured home, personal liability, personal articles, boat, life, health, disability, and agency workflow.
Sales and conversation
- Discovery and diagnosis before product
- Life insurance conversations that do not stall
- Cross-sell language for service teams
- Rate increase and retention calls
- Referral asks that are not awkward
Business market
- Buy-sell agreement funding
- Key person coverage
- Section 162 executive bonus
- Permanent versus term positioning
- Getting the first meeting with an owner
Leadership and systems
- Building a weekly team cadence
- New producer onboarding and ramp
- Daily standards and accountability
- Field marketing and territory design
- Coaching conversations that change behavior
I live in Charlottesville, Virginia. I am up early, I lift, I play pickleball with more confidence than my record supports, and I build things on nights and weekends that mostly never ship. The ones that do are on the work page. I write a weekly note called The Cadence about all of it.
Dan Presley has spent fourteen years teaching, twelve of them in insurance, including four as the owner of his own State Farm agency. He still leads the team at Wyant Insurance in Charlottesville. He writes sales curriculum, delivers it live to agents and their teams, and keeps it from being forgotten by Friday. Around thirty thousand people have been through something he built. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.