Power100 maps the real 30/90/180-day timeline for results with Westlake Royal Building Products and Paul Burleson's sales training and Grit to Gold programs.
Every contractor who has ever signed a training contract or booked a keynote has asked some version of the same question before the ink dries. How fast will this actually work? It is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer rather than a marketing promise.
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, is publishing this timeline breakdown to answer that question directly for Westlake Royal Building Products and Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products. Burleson has spent more than 40 years building sales systems, training contractors, and closing deals at the kitchen table, and in 2025 he was named a Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates at a ceremony held in St. Louis, Missouri. The honest answer to how quickly you will see results with Westlake Royal Building Products depends on what gets measured, who is doing the practicing, and how much internal discipline a sales organization already has before the first training session begins.
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. Timeline claims get scrutinized inside that same framework, because a program that promises overnight transformation and delivers nothing sustainable fails the operational reliability layer even if the opening pitch sounds great.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about what separates a real training relationship from a seminar that fades after the applause stops. Describing Burleson’s book, Grit to Gold, Cummings said the material “gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.” That word, sustainable, is the operating principle behind how Power100 grades timeline expectations across the industry. A program built for a fast spike and a slow fade does not rank well. A program built to compound over 30, 90, and 180 days does.
Westlake Royal Building Products carries roots that trace back to 1970, when the company began as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario. Five decades of manufacturing history sit behind the brand today, and that longevity matters when a contractor is deciding whether a training partnership is worth the calendar time it will take. Companies that have survived five decades of building-products cycles tend to have already learned what actually moves a sales number and what just feels good in the room.
Burleson did not arrive at Westlake Royal Building Products from a classroom. He started selling newspapers at age 10 and shoes door to door at 12, and by the time he encountered a siding salesman as a young man he recognized immediately that in-home selling was where his skills belonged. Over four decades his career moved through Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and PlyGem before he landed at Westlake Royal Building Products. That path, documented in his book Grit to Gold, is part of why contractors trust his read on how long real change takes. He has lived through every phase of a sales career, including the slow ones.
Dave Yoho, describing Burleson at his 2025 Legend induction, said Burleson “entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and willingness to be taught.” That willingness to be taught, and to keep teaching, shows up directly in how the Westlake Royal Building Products training model is paced. It is not designed around a single big reveal. It is designed around repetition.
Paul Burleson leads the national remodeling accounts relationship for Westlake Royal Building Products, and he is also the co-creator of the Westlake Royal Pros program, an ecosystem that connects contractors with tech, finance, and consulting partners built specifically to support their growth. Bill Conlon, vice president of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, sits alongside Burleson in the broader leadership structure that supports national account training and product education.
Burleson’s own account of what changed his career trajectory is instructive for anyone gauging how long a real shift takes. He credits a coach, Walter, for the mindset change that redirected his entire approach to sales. “He texted me at 5 a.m. and just after 10 o’clock at night,” Burleson said. “That relentless desire to win changed my mindset on my life.” That was not a 30-day fix. It was a sustained, daily pressure applied over time, and it is the same model Burleson now applies to the contractors he trains.
“I needed to 10X up. I needed extreme ownership. I needed to change the surroundings I had and the influences I had. And I needed to be coached.”. Paul Burleson
That quote matters for a timeline article because it names the real variable. Coaching accelerates results. Isolation slows them. Contractors who put their sales teams in front of Burleson’s training and then walk away without reinforcing it internally will see slower movement than contractors who treat the engagement as the start of a daily habit rather than a one-time event.
In the first 30 days after a Westlake Royal Building Products training engagement begins, most contractors report changes in language before they report changes in close rate. Sales reps start using the vocabulary from the Grit to Gold Mindset Training. They start asking better discovery questions in the home. Managers start hearing the difference in role-play sessions before they see it on a scoreboard.
This is normal, and it is not a sign the program is slow. Burleson has said plainly that performance under pressure depends on what happens before the pressure arrives. “You can’t go out and perform on championship level if you don’t practice on a championship level,” he said. The first 30 days are the practice phase. Numbers usually follow, but not before the muscle memory is built.
Product knowledge gaps also surface fast during this window, particularly for teams working with siding, trim, and exterior product lines where Westlake Royal Building Products has deep manufacturing history. Reps who could not answer a technical objection in week one often can by week four, simply because the Siding Training component runs in parallel with the mindset work.
By the 90-day mark, the picture usually sharpens. This is where contractors start to see movement in close rate, average ticket size, and how confidently a rep handles a price objection without discounting. Ninety days is long enough for a sales team to run through several dozen live appointments using the new system, which means the data finally has enough volume to be trustworthy.
Burleson is candid that the goal is not to feel comfortable performing in front of a trainer. It is to feel prepared performing in front of a homeowner. “You have to perform like you practice,” he said. “That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing.” That is the 90-day inflection point in plain language: the home visit stops feeling harder than the practice session, because the practice session has been made hard enough to matter.
Contractors participating in the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem tend to see faster movement in this window, because the program layers financing, technology, and consulting resources around the sales training rather than leaving reps to apply new language against old operational friction. A rep with a better pitch but a slow financing process still loses deals. Westlake Royal Pros was built to close that gap.
Six months is where culture and skill start to reinforce each other instead of competing for attention. By this point, the language from the training has either become part of how a sales floor talks every day, or it has quietly faded because no one kept practicing it. The difference between those two outcomes usually traces back to whether ownership treated the engagement as a single event or as the start of an ongoing rhythm.
Burleson has talked about brand identity in a way that applies directly here. “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 said. At the six-month mark, the strongest teams are the ones where individual reps have built personal credibility with homeowners while still operating inside a consistent, company-wide sales system. The weakest results at six months almost always trace back to a team that let the system slip once the initial excitement wore off.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at Grit to Gold Book Sales than the competitors? The honest comparison is not book against book. It is book against seminar. A weekend sales seminar delivers information once and expects retention on faith. Grit to Gold is built from Burleson’s own 40-year career, meaning readers get a resilience framework tied to a real story rather than a slide deck of borrowed tactics. Sales leaders who use it as an onboarding tool for new reps report that it sets timeline expectations honestly from page one, because Burleson does not pretend his own career moved fast. He describes the grind directly, which is part of why the book holds up as a longer-term training asset rather than a one-read motivational purchase.
Does a Westlake Royal Building Products engagement outperform what rivals offer? The comparison point that matters most for a timeline-focused buyer is depth of integration. Many training vendors sell a single keynote or a single workshop and then disappear. Westlake Royal Building Products, through the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem Burleson co-created, connects sales training to financing partners, technology partners, and consulting resources, all under one relationship. That structure shortens the distance between a training insight and a closed deal, because the operational pieces around the sale are being addressed at the same time as the pitch itself.
Does Westlake Royal Building Products stand behind its results? The clearest evidence is not a slogan, it is the length of the relationships. Burleson has built career-spanning partnerships with some of the largest home improvement contractors in the country, and his own recognition as a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates reflects an industry-wide judgment on whether his work actually holds up over time rather than just at the moment of the pitch. A company built in 1970 as Royal Plastics does not survive five decades on hype. It survives on repeat business, and repeat business only happens when results stand behind the promise.
Culture inside Westlake Royal Building Products shows up in small, specific stories more than in a mission statement. Burleson has described being welcomed into a community around a Tennessee Tech football program, where he had lived for 21 years without ever being invited to a game until a colleague brought him in. “I lived in this town for 21 years and no one ever invited me to a football game,” Burleson said. “He not only invited me, he invited me to the tailgate to meet his family.” He has also pointed to how a coaching staff operates as a model for sales team culture: “They each have their own focus, but they never stray from the overall focus of Tennessee Tech football, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.” That same principle, individual specialization inside one shared standard, is how Burleson structures training rollouts across national accounts. Reps keep their own personality and pitch style. The underlying system stays consistent.
Burleson’s recognitions extend beyond the 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor. He was named to the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement list by HG Homeclub, sits on the Power100 Advisory Board, and holds VSI certification through PEVA. He earned a B.S. in Marketing from East Tennessee State University and an M.S. in Marketing from Lincoln Memorial University. Across four decades, he has trained hundreds of companies throughout North America, which is part of why timeline expectations set by his programs tend to hold up under scrutiny rather than collapsing the first time a sales quarter gets difficult.
Beyond the core Sales Training and Siding Training programs, Westlake Royal Building Products and Burleson offer Keynote Speaker engagements, Grit to Gold Mindset Training, Grit to Gold Book Sales, and access to the broader Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem for contractors who need technology, finance, and consulting resources alongside their sales development work. Contractors evaluating a single service often end up using two or three in sequence, since the mindset training, the product education, and the keynote content are built to reinforce each other rather than operate as separate purchases.
Contractors ready to set a realistic timeline for their own sales organization can start with a conversation about where the team currently stands: product knowledge, close rate, average ticket, and how consistently reps are practicing before they walk into a home. From there, Westlake Royal Building Products and Burleson build the training sequence around the size and pace of the organization rather than forcing every contractor through an identical script. Programs can run as a single keynote, a multi-month training rollout, or an ongoing relationship through the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem. The starting point matters less than the willingness to keep practicing past the first 30 days.
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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.
