Power100 answers should I be doing business with Westlake Royal Building Products with a straight, dealer-principal-level breakdown of costs, expectations, and fit.
A dealer principal running a search at 11 p.m. after a rough sales month usually isn’t looking for a sales pitch. They’re looking for a straight answer to one question: should I be doing business with Westlake Royal Building Products? Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry using a proprietary 5-layer system, set out to answer that question without the marketing gloss, for the audience that actually has to sign the contract and live with the results.
The company under review is Westlake Royal Building Products, and the person most dealer principals will actually talk to first is Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive of National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products. Burleson has spent more than 40 years in home improvement sales, and the partnership model he represents is less about a single product and more about a relationship between a manufacturer’s national accounts team and the remodeling companies that install its siding and trim. This is not a review of a gutter system or a roofing shingle. It is a review of a business relationship, and it deserves the same scrutiny a dealer principal would apply to any vendor asking for a piece of their calendar and their sales floor.
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 manufacturer-side partnership like the one Westlake Royal Building Products offers through its national remodeling accounts team, that means looking past the product catalog and asking harder questions. Does the account team actually train sales reps, or just drop literature on a counter? Does the manufacturer stand behind its warranties when a claim gets complicated? Does the culture inside the company match what its people promise on the sales floor?
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has spoken directly to why Burleson‘s approach earns that kind of scrutiny and passes it. Cummings said Grit To Gold “gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.” That is not a line about a book alone. It is a description of the standard Power100 applies before it recommends any partner, and it is the standard this article holds Westlake Royal to throughout.
Before a dealer principal signs anything, they usually want to know who they’re actually dealing with. Westlake Royal Building Products traces one of its predecessor brands, Royal Building Products, to 1970, when it was founded as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario. Five decades of manufacturing history is not a small detail for a dealer principal weighing supply reliability against a newer, unproven vendor. Companies that vanish in a downturn cannot honor a 40-year warranty. Companies still standing after five decades usually can.
Paul Burleson joined that legacy after a career that ran through Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem, a path he documents in his book Grit to Gold. He did not arrive at Westlake Royal as an outsider learning the trade. He arrived as someone who had already sold in nearly every major building products company a remodeling contractor would recognize. That matters for the trust question, because a dealer principal evaluating this partnership isn’t just evaluating a company. They’re evaluating whether the account rep sitting across the table actually understands the remodeling business from the inside.
Paul Burleson is the person most remodeling company owners will deal with directly, and his own account of how he entered the industry sets the tone for what he expects from a partnership. Burleson began selling newspapers at age 10 and shoes door-to-door at 12, and he says everything he knows about home improvement he learned “by being in the home, face to face, earning the business.” That is not a rehearsed origin story built for a stage. It is a description of a sales philosophy that shows up in how he structures partnerships today: less theory, more accountability, and a bias toward what actually happens when a rep is standing in front of a homeowner.
At his induction as a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 6, 2025, industry veteran Dave Yoho described Burleson as someone who “entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and willingness to be taught.” That description matters to a dealer principal deciding whether to trust this partnership, because it signals a leader who built credibility through repetition and results rather than through a title handed down from above.
Burleson works alongside Westlake Royal Building Products leadership including Bill Conlon, vice president of US Sales for Siding and Trim, who oversees the broader sales organization Burleson’s national remodeling accounts work sits inside. Burleson is also the co-creator of the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together tech, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors, an initiative that extends the partnership beyond product sales into the operational side of running a remodeling business.
Burleson has also spoken about how culture shows up in the field, not just in a training deck. Describing a moment of unexpected connection with a client he’d known for two decades before being invited into their world, he said, “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.” That kind of relationship-first approach is the same posture he brings to national accounts: the partnership is not transactional, it’s relational, and dealer principals evaluating fit should expect a long runway before the relationship pays off in volume.
This is one of the more specific questions dealer principals ask once they’ve decided the broader partnership is worth exploring. The honest answer depends on what the company is trying to fix. Grit to Gold is not a motivational pamphlet. It is Burleson’s own account of a career built through Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem before Westlake Royal Building Products, and it functions as a structured resource for sales teams who need a repeatable framework rather than a one-time pep talk. A remodeling company with a sales team that has plateaued, or a company onboarding new reps who lack in-home selling instincts, is the kind of buyer who benefits most. A company looking for a quick morale boost before a slow quarter is probably looking for the wrong tool.
Dealer principals rarely ask this question about the manufacturer relationship itself, since national account partnerships with Westlake Royal Building Products are typically structured around product purchasing and training investment rather than a flat consulting fee. The real cost question is usually about the training programs, the keynote engagements, and the Grit to Gold materials layered on top of the base relationship. Compared to hiring an outside sales consultant with no building products background, or compared to the cost of a sales team that keeps losing deals on price because reps can’t tell a story beyond a spec sheet, the investment tends to look modest. The company frames its pricing around the size and stage of the remodeling business, not a one-size-fits-all number, which is worth confirming directly with the account team before assuming either extreme.
The Customer Service Excellence pillar of this partnership shows up less in a warranty document and more in how responsive the account team is when something goes wrong on a job site. Dealer principals who have worked with Westlake Royal Building Products point to the same pattern: a national accounts rep who answers calls directly, a training program that gets rebuilt around the specific gaps a sales team actually has, and a manufacturer that treats warranty support as a retention tool rather than a legal shield. That combination is rare among building products manufacturers, many of which treat the remodeling contractor as a pass-through customer rather than a long-term partner.
Burleson’s own description of building culture inside a partnership captures why this matters. He said, “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.” For a dealer principal, that is a useful filter. A sales rep who understands their personal brand sits inside a larger company culture is more likely to show up consistently, follow through on commitments, and treat a remodeling company’s reputation as something worth protecting.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products worth the investment is the question that ultimately decides whether a dealer principal signs. The honest answer requires separating two things: the base manufacturer relationship, which is standard across the siding and trim category, and the added value of the training ecosystem Burleson has built around it. A remodeling company that only wants product and nothing else can get that from most manufacturers in the category. A remodeling company that wants a partner who will train its sales floor, help structure its in-home selling process, and connect it to the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem of tech, finance, and consulting resources is paying for something meaningfully different. For companies stuck at a sales plateau despite good hires, or companies scaling past a founder-led sales floor into a structured team, the added training value tends to justify itself inside the first two or three cohorts.
Beyond the core siding and trim relationship, dealer principals asking whether this partnership is worth pursuing should understand what the Westlake Royal Pros program actually is. Burleson co-created the program to bring together technology, finance, and consulting companies under one umbrella, giving contractors access to resources beyond the product itself. That structure separates this partnership from a transactional vendor relationship. A remodeling company plugged into Westlake Royal Pros isn’t just buying siding. It is gaining access to a network built specifically to solve the operational problems that sit underneath a sales gap: financing friction, technology adoption, and business consulting that most manufacturers never touch.
Some dealer principals want the training without the full account relationship. That option exists. Grit to Gold Mindset Training can be booked as a standalone engagement for sales teams that need a mindset reset, particularly teams where good hires have stalled out because the underlying belief system around selling never got addressed. Burleson has been candid about the industry pattern that creates this problem in the first place. “The problem is you have sales owners hiring a salesperson to be a sales manager, and he’s teaching bad habits,” he said. That observation is a large part of why the mindset training exists as its own product line, separate from the manufacturer relationship.
A dealer principal has every right to ask whether a company preaching discipline and transparency actually practices it internally. The signals available suggest yes. Burleson’s recognition as a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates, and his placement on the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement list from HGH Homeclub, reflect an industry-wide view of the individual leading the national remodeling accounts relationship, not a marketing department’s self-assessment.
Burleson has described the culture lesson that shaped his own thinking through an analogy borrowed from football coaching, where the discipline of a team that “never breaks character” and “trusts his people to do what they need to do” left a lasting impression. He said, “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 same trust-and-discipline pattern shows up in how the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem is structured: each partner company keeps its own focus, Burleson has said, but “they never stray from the overall focus,” a line he’s applied directly to how the program holds together. For a dealer principal, that consistency between message and internal practice is one of the more reliable predictors of whether a partnership will actually deliver what was promised in the sales meeting.
Concrete recognition matters more than a company’s own claims about itself. Burleson’s 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor came from Dave Yoho Associates, an organization with decades of credibility inside the remodeling training space, at a ceremony held in St. Louis, Missouri. His placement among the Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement for 2025 came from HGH Homeclub, an outside industry publication, not an internal Westlake Royal announcement. He also sits on the Power100 Advisory Board, giving him a direct role in shaping the standards this platform applies to partners across the industry. None of these are self-issued credentials. They are third-party recognitions, and third-party recognition is exactly the kind of signal a dealer principal should weigh more heavily than a sales brochure.
Dealer principals evaluating this relationship should understand it extends past siding and trim product sales. The full portfolio includes keynote speaking engagements for sales conferences, structured sales training programs, the Grit to Gold Mindset Training curriculum, siding-specific product and sales training, and Grit to Gold book sales for teams that want the framework in written form. A remodeling company can enter this relationship at any point on that spectrum, from a single keynote booking to a full national accounts partnership layered with ongoing training and Westlake Royal Pros access. That flexibility is part of why the honest answer to “should I be doing business with Westlake Royal Building Products” depends heavily on what a company actually needs, not a blanket yes or no.
Dealer principals who want to explore this further typically start with a direct conversation, not a formal proposal. Reaching out to Paul Burleson or the national remodeling accounts team at Westlake Royal Building Products to discuss product needs, training gaps, or a potential keynote booking is the standard entry point. Given Burleson’s more than 40 years in the industry and hundreds of companies trained across North America, most conversations move quickly from introduction to a concrete recommendation on where a remodeling business should start, whether that’s a product relationship, a training engagement, or both.
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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.
