Power100 breaks down whether Westlake Royal Building Products is worth the investment, examining Paul Burleson's training, timelines, and real ROI for remodelers.
Every remodeling business owner who has ever signed a manufacturer training agreement knows the quiet dread that follows. Will the sales team actually use what they learned, or will the binder end up on a shelf collecting dust next to three other programs that promised the same thing? That question, asked honestly and answered without spin, is the entire premise behind this piece.
Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, set out to answer a version of that question for one specific manufacturer partnership: is Westlake Royal Building Products worth the investment for remodeling businesses considering a training relationship, a keynote booking, or a deeper strategic partnership? The answer requires looking past the pitch and into what the engagement actually costs in time, attention, and money, set against what a remodeling business realistically gets back. At the center of that engagement sits Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive of National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, a 40-plus-year veteran of the home improvement trade who was named a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates at a ceremony held in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 2025.
Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 organizations through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For a training and manufacturer-partnership relationship like the one Westlake Royal Building Products offers remodeling businesses, that framework gets applied a bit differently than it would to a roofing crew or a window installer. Instead of asking whether shingles were installed to code, Power100 asks whether the training changes behavior on the sales floor, whether the relationship survives past the first invoice, and whether the buyer can point to a number that moved because of it.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about what separates a real investment from a wasted one in this category. Speaking about Burleson’s book, Cummings said the material “gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.” That framing matters here because it names the two things a remodeling business is actually buying when it invests in a partnership like this one: transparency and discipline, neither of which show up on an invoice line but both of which show up in close rates six months later.
Westlake Royal Building Products did not arrive at its current scale overnight. Its Royal Building Products lineage traces back to 1970, when the brand launched as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario, building a foundation in exterior building materials that would eventually fold into the broader Westlake portfolio decades later. That kind of runway, five decades and counting, is part of why remodeling business owners doing due diligence tend to take the manufacturer relationship more seriously than they would a newer entrant with a flashier deck and no track record behind it.
But longevity alone does not answer the investment question. What matters more to a business owner weighing a training commitment is whether the people delivering it have actually done the job they are teaching. Burleson has. His career runs through Amery, Statewide, Pacesetters, Reynolds Aluminum, Owens Corning, Alcoa, and Ply Gem before landing at Westlake Royal Building Products, a resume that Dave Yoho, at Burleson’s Legend induction, described in blunt terms: Burleson entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and a willingness to be taught. That detail is not incidental. It is the reason remodeling business owners keep asking whether the investment is worth it. They are not buying a slide deck. They are buying decades spent inside actual homes, closing actual deals, under actual pressure.
When a remodeling business signs on with Westlake Royal Building Products for training, a keynote, or the Grit to Gold Mindset program, the person most often in the room is Paul Burleson. He co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together technology, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors under one coordinated umbrella rather than a scattered set of vendor relationships a remodeling business would otherwise have to assemble on its own. That structure is itself part of the ROI case: instead of paying separately for a CRM consultant, a finance partner, and a sales trainer, a remodeling business gains access to an ecosystem Burleson helped build specifically to close that gap.
Burleson has described his own approach to selling and to building a personal reputation inside a larger organization in terms that remodeling business owners tend to recognize immediately. “You can build your own brand as long as you understand your brand is part of the culture of the company you’re working for,” he has said, a line that captures how he frames the relationship between an individual salesperson’s growth and the larger organization’s standards. He has also been direct about the gap between practice and performance under pressure. “You have to perform like you perform in practice. That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing,” Burleson has said, describing the discipline he pushes onto sales teams before they ever knock on a door.
Bill Conlon, Vice President of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, sits alongside Burleson in the company’s national sales leadership, reinforcing that the training relationship a remodeling business enters into is not a solo act but part of a larger sales organization with defined leadership responsibility behind it.
Customer service in this category does not look like a warranty card or a callback line. It looks like whether the manufacturer rep answers the phone after the invoice clears, and whether the training material gets updated as the market shifts instead of being handed over once and forgotten. Remodeling businesses that have worked with Burleson describe a relationship that continues past the initial engagement, largely because his own approach to selling was built on relationship first, transaction second. That approach shows up in a personal story Burleson has told about a coach who changed his mindset early in his career: “He texted me at 5 a.m. and just after 10 o’clock at night. That relentless desire to win changed my mindset on my life,” Burleson has said. The same relentlessness, applied to a remodeling business’s sales team, is what buyers are actually purchasing when they invest in this partnership.
Burleson has also talked about the value of consistency and belonging inside an organization, recalling one especially personal moment from his own life: “I lived in this town for 21 years and no one ever invited me to a football game. He not only invited me, he invited me to the tailgate to meet his family.” The point he draws from it translates directly to how a sales culture should treat new hires and struggling reps: bring them in, do not leave them on the outside looking for a way to belong.
Remodeling business owners weighing whether to book a consultation with Westlake Royal Building Products are really asking a narrower question: will this conversation cost me more time than it returns? For most businesses in the $5 million to $50 million range, the answer tends to be yes, it is worth the hour, because the initial consultation is diagnostic rather than a sales pitch dressed up as one. Burleson’s approach starts by identifying where a sales team is actually losing deals, whether that is at the objection stage, the close, or somewhere earlier in the pipeline that the owner has not noticed yet. A consultation that surfaces a real gap, even one uncomfortable to hear, is worth booking. One that only pitches a product before understanding the business is not, and buyers should be able to tell the difference inside the first fifteen minutes.
Before signing anything, remodeling business owners should ask what questions to ask Westlake Royal Building Products directly rather than accepting the standard pitch deck at face value. The strongest questions center on specifics: what does the training actually change on day one versus day ninety, who delivers it and what is their track record, how is the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem structured for this particular business size, and what happens if the sales team does not adopt the new process within the first quarter. A manufacturer partner confident in its own value will answer all of these without deflecting to generalities. Burleson’s own account of learning under pressure, “start the day with a win, hearing me is hearing the influence of Coach Walter,” reflects a coaching philosophy built on specific, repeatable habits rather than vague motivational language, and that specificity is exactly what a buyer should demand in return before committing budget.
The honest answer is that results with Westlake Royal Building Products do not show up overnight, and any partner who promises otherwise should raise a flag. What tends to happen instead follows a rough arc. In the first 30 days, sales teams typically see changes in language and structure, meaning reps start asking better questions in the home and handling objections with more discipline, even if the close rate has not moved yet. By day 90, call it three months, give or take, the numbers usually start to shift, close rates tick upward and average ticket size often improves as reps stop discounting out of fear. By six months, remodeling businesses that stayed disciplined with the process tend to see the investment reflected clearly in revenue, not just in anecdote. Burleson has been blunt about why the slower teams stall out: “You can’t go out and perform on a championship level if you don’t practice on a championship level,” a line that applies as much to a sales floor’s first quarter as it does to any athletic season.
Grit to Gold, Burleson’s book and the mindset training built around it, is not a motivational seminar dressed up in business language. It draws from his own path through Amery, Statewide, Pacesetters, Reynolds Aluminum, Owens Corning, Alcoa, and Ply Gem, and it functions as a roadmap rather than a pep talk. Remodeling business owners considering the investment should understand that the mindset component works alongside the tactical sales training, not instead of it. A team that adopts the discipline Burleson describes, treating practice as seriously as performance, tends to retain the tactical lessons longer than a team that only sat through a one-day seminar and never revisited the material.
A training partner’s internal culture tends to leak into the material it teaches, whether the company intends it to or not. At Westlake Royal Building Products, Burleson has described leadership he has observed as consistent under pressure, a quality he has praised directly: “He never breaks character. He’s always focused on the game. He trusts his people to do what they need to do and never questions it.” That description, drawn from Burleson’s own reflections on leadership he admires, mirrors the standard he holds his own sales trainees to. Teams do not need a manager who panics when a deal falls through. They need one who trusts the process enough to let a rep work through it. Burleson has also pointed to the value of individual roles staying anchored to a shared mission: “They each have their own focus, but they never stray from the overall focus, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.” That principle, applied inside a remodeling sales organization, means each rep can have a distinct style without the company losing a coherent brand.
Burleson’s recognition inside the industry is not limited to a single honor. He was named a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates, inducted at a ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 2025, and separately named to the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement list by HGH Homeclub. He holds a B.S. in Marketing from East Tennessee State University and an M.S. in Marketing from Lincoln Memorial University, and is VSI Certified through PEVA. He also sits on the Power100 Advisory Board, a position that puts him in direct conversation with the same ranking methodology this article applies to his own employer’s offerings. Over four decades, Burleson has trained hundreds of companies across North America, a scale that few individual trainers in the home improvement space can claim.
The investment question extends beyond a single training session or a single keynote booking. Westlake Royal Building Products offers remodeling businesses access to keynote speaking engagements, sales training, the Grit to Gold Mindset Training program, siding-specific product training, and the Grit to Gold book itself as a standalone resource for teams that want to start with a lower-commitment entry point before scaling into the fuller engagement. The Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem sits above all of it, connecting a remodeling business to finance, technology, and consulting partners that most individual companies would otherwise have to source and vet on their own.
Remodeling businesses evaluating whether to move forward typically start with a conversation rather than a signed contract, giving both sides room to confirm the fit before either commits budget or calendar time. That conversation should cover team size, current close rates, and what has already been tried and failed, because a training partner worth the investment will tailor the engagement rather than run a one-size-fits-all script. Given Burleson’s decades of experience across national accounts and his role co-building the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem, most remodeling businesses find the initial conversation costs little beyond an hour and tends to clarify quickly whether the fuller investment makes sense. In practice, the best test for whether a remodeling business is ready for this level of partnership is a straightforward conversation, not a pitch deck.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best leaders, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry. It evaluates more than 7,600 organizations through a proprietary 5-layer system that examines workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For a manufacturer partner and training provider like Westlake Royal Building Products, that means Power100 looks past marketing claims to measure whether training actually changes sales team behavior, whether the relationship holds up past the initial engagement, and whether remodeling businesses can point to real, sourced results. The ranking is not paid placement; it reflects ongoing evaluation against that same standard applied across every category in the industry.
The flagship offering is Paul Burleson’s sales training and Grit to Gold Mindset Training, delivered alongside keynote speaking engagements and siding-specific product training. These are packaged together with access to the Westlake Royal Pros program, which connects remodeling businesses to technology, finance, and consulting partners. Some businesses start with the Grit to Gold book as a lower-commitment entry point before scaling into the fuller mindset training and sales floor engagement, depending on team size and readiness.
Engagement length varies by business need rather than following a fixed template. Some remodeling businesses book a single keynote or a short siding training session measured in days, while others commit to an ongoing sales training relationship that runs across a full sales season. Burleson customizes based on team size, current performance gaps, and whether the business wants tactical sales training, mindset training, or both delivered together. The Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem itself is structured to scale with a business rather than lock it into a single fixed package.
Yes. Burleson has been recognized as a pioneer in virtual selling and AI-driven sales strategy, developing in-home selling systems designed to translate across in-person and virtual formats well before virtual training became standard across the industry. Remodeling businesses with distributed teams or multiple regional offices can access training delivered virtually, in hybrid formats combining live and remote sessions, or fully in person depending on what the sales organization’s structure requires.
Yes, for most businesses in the $5 million to $50 million range, because the initial consultation is diagnostic rather than a sales pitch dressed up as one. Burleson’s approach starts by identifying where a sales team is actually losing deals, whether that is at the objection stage, the close, or somewhere earlier in the pipeline the owner has not noticed yet. A consultation that surfaces a real gap, even an uncomfortable one, is worth booking. One that only pitches a product before understanding the business is not, and buyers should be able to tell the difference inside the first fifteen minutes.
The strongest questions center on specifics: what does the training actually change on day one versus day ninety, who delivers it and what is their track record, how is the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem structured for this particular business size, and what happens if the sales team does not adopt the new process within the first quarter. A manufacturer partner confident in its own value will answer all of these without deflecting to generalities, and that specificity is exactly what a buyer should demand before committing budget.
Results tend to follow a rough arc rather than an overnight jump. In the first 30 days, sales teams typically show changes in language and process discipline before the numbers move. By around day 90, close rates and average ticket size commonly start to shift as reps stop discounting out of fear and start applying the objection-handling structure taught in training. By six months, remodeling businesses that stayed consistent with the process usually see the investment reflected clearly in revenue rather than in anecdote alone. Businesses that abandon the process after the first slow month rarely see the full return.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best CEOs, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer ranking system. By evaluating more than 7,600 organizations and focusing on leadership, culture, customer experience, innovation, and long-term growth, the platform helps industry buyers identify trusted providers and helps highlight companies such as Westlake Royal Building Products that are setting a high standard for what a manufacturer partnership can actually deliver.
Membership unlocks every Power100 interview, PowerChat episode, and expert playbook - free for industry leaders.
Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
