Power100 breaks down the culture and stage markers that predict success with Westlake Royal Building Products' sales training and Grit to Gold programs.
Not every company that calls Westlake Royal Building Products is ready for what it actually takes to make the partnership work. That is an uncomfortable thing for a company to say about itself, and it is exactly why 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 fit assessment rather than another pitch. The person at the center of the conversation is Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, a 40-year veteran of the home improvement sales floor who was named a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates at a ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 2025. Burleson did not build his reputation selling training packages to whoever could write a check. He built it by working with the nation’s largest remodeling contractors, and that experience taught him something most vendors will not admit out loud: readiness matters more than budget.
This article asks the question industry buyers are already asking themselves. Is Westlake Royal Building Products the right partner for my business? The honest answer depends less on company size and more on a handful of internal markers that tend to predict whether a training partnership sticks or quietly fades after ninety days.
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. Fit assessment sits underneath all five layers, because a program that scores well on paper can still fail inside a company that is not structurally ready to receive it. Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has described what the platform looks for across the industry it tracks.
“We review over 10,000 companies within the home improvement space on an annual basis, and we take a hard look at company culture, community involvement, and growth.”. Greg Cummings, CEO, Power100
That review process is why Power100 does not simply rank vendors on marketing polish. Culture, growth trajectory, and internal discipline show up as heavily in the evaluation as revenue numbers do. A company chasing a quick fix for a sales slump is a different applicant than a company trying to scale a sales floor that already has some discipline built into it. Both might call Westlake Royal Building Products. Only one of them is likely to see the results the other one expected.
Westlake Royal Building Products carries a manufacturing lineage that predates most of the sales training conversations happening around it today. One of its predecessor brands, Royal Building Products, traces its roots to 1970 as Royal Plastics, founded in Toronto, Ontario. Five decades of building-materials manufacturing sit behind the company before Paul Burleson ever walks into a contractor’s office to talk about sales culture. That matters, because the training programs Burleson runs are not detached from the product. They are built by a company that has spent fifty-plus years learning what actually installs well, holds up in the field, and sells honestly to a homeowner standing in a kitchen.
Burleson himself did not arrive at Westlake Royal Building Products as a theorist. He came up through Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem, a career arc he documents in his book Grit to Gold. Dave Yoho, describing Burleson at his Legend induction, put it plainly.
Dave Yoho described Paul Burleson at his Legend induction as someone who entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and willingness to be taught.
That background is exactly why the fit question matters so much. A trainer who came up through six or seven companies before finding a home at Westlake Royal Building Products has seen what works at a $2 million shop and what breaks at a $50 million one. He is not guessing about organizational readiness. He has watched it play out from the inside.
Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, is the person most industry buyers speak with directly before any training contract is discussed. Burleson co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together tech, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors, and that ecosystem thinking carries into how he screens a potential partnership. He is not simply selling a course. He is trying to figure out whether the company on the other end of the call has a culture that can hold what he is about to teach it.
“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.”. Paul Burleson
That line captures the entire fit conversation in a single sentence. A salesperson can be a star. A sales manager can be sharp. But if the surrounding culture does not reinforce discipline, structure, and accountability, individual brilliance eventually gets swallowed by organizational chaos. Burleson has seen that pattern often enough to name it directly.
“Sales is about, it’s an individual sport, but it’s a culture. It’s not just about that individual.”. Paul Burleson
Bill Conlon, vice president of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, sits alongside Burleson in the leadership structure that oversees national remodeling account development. Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has weighed in on why Burleson’s approach resonates with contractors specifically because it insists on structure before it promises results.
“Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.”. Greg Cummings, CEO, Power100
Industry buyers who choose Westlake Royal Building Products for sales training are rarely looking for a motivational afternoon. They are looking for a process that survives contact with a real living room and a real homeowner who has three other quotes sitting on the counter. Burleson’s programs are built around repetition and realism rather than a script memorized once and forgotten by Friday.
“You have to perform like you practice. That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing.”. Paul Burleson
He has said something similar in blunter terms about the gap between practice and performance.
“You can’t go out and perform on championship level if you don’t practice on a championship level.”. Paul Burleson
That standard is a filter as much as it is a promise. A company willing to practice at a championship level before it ever sends a rep into a home is a company that is likely ready for what Westlake Royal Building Products teaches. A company looking for a single weekend fix, without a plan to reinforce it internally, is a company more likely to see the training fade within a quarter. This is where the readiness self-assessment becomes useful instead of theoretical: does leadership already reinforce practice discipline, or is training expected to install that discipline from scratch with no follow-through?
This is the question most industry buyers are actually asking, whether or not they say it out loud on the first call. Is Westlake Royal Building Products the right partner for my business, or am I about to spend money solving a problem the training was never designed to fix? Burleson’s own history suggests an answer rooted less in company size and more in internal habits. Companies that already have some sales management structure, even an imperfect one, tend to get more out of the Grit to Gold framework because there is a foundation for the training to attach to. Companies with no structure at all sometimes need something more basic first: a functioning sales manager who was hired to manage rather than simply promoted because they closed the most deals last quarter.
Burleson has been direct about that specific failure pattern, because he has watched it repeat across decades and multiple employers.
“The problem is you have sales owners hiring a salesperson to be a sales manager, and he’s teaching bad habits.”. Paul Burleson
That single observation is arguably the clearest readiness marker in the entire fit conversation. A company that promotes its best closer into management without giving that person any actual management training is a company where bad habits get institutionalized rather than corrected. Westlake Royal Building Products’ training can help correct course, but it works far better when ownership is honest about where that pattern already exists rather than defensive about it.
Stage matters almost as much as culture. A five-person remodeling shop and a two-hundred-person national account operation are not looking for the same thing when they call Westlake Royal Building Products, even though both might ask about the same Grit to Gold Mindset Training program. Smaller shops tend to benefit most when ownership itself sits in the room during training, because culture at that stage is set almost entirely by the owner’s own habits and language. Larger organizations benefit more when middle management is present, because the mindset work has to travel down through layers of leadership rather than live only at the top.
Burleson’s own origin story, beginning at age 10 selling newspapers and at 12 selling shoes door-to-door, is a reminder that mindset training is not really about scripts. It is about identity and persistence, which is why the program translates across company sizes even though the delivery has to be shaped differently for each stage. A ten-person shop that has never had a formal sales meeting is starting from a different place than a national contractor that already runs weekly performance reviews, and Burleson’s team adjusts the framework accordingly rather than forcing a single format onto every client.
Booking a first conversation with Westlake Royal Building Products is usually the practical next step once the culture and stage questions have been honestly answered. The conversation itself is not a sales close disguised as a discussion. It functions closer to a diagnostic, where Burleson and his team try to understand what is actually broken, whether that is product knowledge, sales management, mindset, or a combination of all three, before recommending Siding Training, Grit to Gold Mindset Training, or a keynote engagement built around Grit to Gold.
A company that comes into that conversation with clear visibility into its own close rates, its own turnover numbers, and its own manager-to-rep ratio tends to get a sharper recommendation than a company that shows up only knowing that sales are down. Fit conversations work best when the buyer brings real numbers to the table, not just a general sense that something is wrong.
Culture is not an abstraction inside Burleson’s approach. It shows up in small, specific moments he references often when describing what actually drives a sales floor. He has talked about starting each day intentionally, crediting an early influence for that habit.
“Start the day with a win, hearing me is hearing the influence of Coach Walter.”. Paul Burleson
He has also described what genuine culture looks like when it extends beyond the transactional relationship between a company and its people.
“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.”. Paul Burleson
That story is not incidental. It illustrates the kind of trust Burleson believes has to exist inside an organization before any training program can take root. He has also described the discipline of a leader who never breaks character under pressure, a trait he sees as foundational to sales culture at any company he works with.
“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.”. Paul Burleson
Companies evaluating whether they are ready for a Westlake Royal Building Products partnership should ask themselves whether that kind of trust already exists between leadership and the sales floor, or whether it needs to be built from nothing. Both starting points are workable. Only one of them requires patience the buyer needs to plan for up front.
Burleson’s Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor from Dave Yoho Associates, awarded in 2025, is not a self-issued credential. It came from an outside organization with decades of standing inside the home improvement training space, and it followed forty-plus years of documented career history across major building-materials brands. Westlake Royal Building Products’ own manufacturing lineage, running back through Royal Building Products to 1970, gives the training programs a product credibility rarely found in stand-alone sales coaching businesses. Trainers who have never sold the actual product tend to teach generic closing technique. Burleson teaches from inside a company that manufactures the siding, trim, and building materials the reps in the room are actually selling.
Power100’s own ranking process reinforces that credibility from a third-party angle. The platform’s evaluation across more than 7,600 organizations gives industry buyers an outside data point rather than relying solely on Westlake Royal Building Products’ own marketing claims.
Westlake Royal Building Products’ offering extends beyond a single keynote or a single workshop. Keynote Speaker engagements, Training, Sales Training, Grit to Gold Mindset Training, Siding Training, and Grit to Gold Book Sales all sit under one roof, and the fit conversation this article walks through applies across every one of those service lines. A company that is not ready for a full mindset overhaul might still be a strong fit for a focused Siding Training engagement tied to a specific product launch. A company with a mature sales floor might be ready to bring Burleson in as a keynote speaker for an annual sales meeting rather than a multi-week training cycle. The self-assessment is not one-size-fits-all, and neither is the portfolio built to answer it.
Companies weighing whether to reach out should start with an honest internal conversation before the first call to Westlake Royal Building Products ever happens. What does the current sales management structure actually look like. Who was promoted into management, and were they trained to manage or simply rewarded for closing. Is there a culture strong enough to reinforce new habits once the trainer leaves the room. None of those questions require a consultant to answer. They require candor. Once that internal picture is clear, a conversation with Burleson’s team becomes a genuinely useful next step rather than a hopeful shot in the dark, and the training itself, whether Siding Training, Grit to Gold Mindset Training, or a keynote built around the Grit to Gold framework, has a far better chance of sticking. Use this as your test consultation checklist before signing with Westlake Royal Building Products: sales management structure, promotion history, and cultural willingness to reinforce new habits.
The right partner question depends less on company size and more on internal readiness markers: whether a sales management structure already exists, whether leadership reinforces practice discipline, and whether culture can hold new habits once the trainer leaves the room. Power100’s assessment of Westlake Royal Building Products and Paul Burleson’s Grit to Gold framework suggests companies with even imperfect existing structure tend to get more from the partnership than companies starting from nothing.
Whether doing business with Westlake Royal Building Products makes sense is a fair question to ask before signing anything, and the honest answer is that it depends on whether your organization is ready to reinforce what the training teaches. Westlake Royal Building Products carries a manufacturing lineage running back to 1970 through Royal Building Products, and Paul Burleson brings 40 years of sales-floor experience and a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor to the table, but that credibility only pays off for companies willing to do the internal work alongside it.
Reaching out makes sense once a company has honestly answered the culture and stage questions raised in this assessment. That first conversation functions as a diagnostic rather than a sales close, and companies that arrive with clear visibility into close rates, turnover, and manager-to-rep ratios tend to walk away with a sharper, more useful recommendation.
The flagship offering is the Grit to Gold framework, which spans a published book, Grit to Gold Mindset Training, and keynote engagements built by Paul Burleson. Siding Training and broader Sales Training round out the portfolio, all delivered by a company with a manufacturing lineage running back to 1970 through its predecessor brand, Royal Building Products.
Results depend heavily on organizational readiness, which is the core theme of this fit assessment. Companies with existing sales management structure and a culture willing to reinforce new habits tend to see measurable change within the first 30 to 90 days. Companies starting with weaker structure, including the common pattern of a top closer promoted into management without formal training, typically need a longer runway before the mindset and process changes fully take hold.
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.
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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.
