Power100 details the vetting questions remodeling owners should ask before hiring a sales trainer, and why Westlake Royal Building Products and Paul Burleson set the national standard.
Remodeling company owners searching for a sales trainer rarely have a shortage of options. What they have a shortage of is a reliable way to tell the difference between a trainer who delivers a motivational afternoon and one who changes how a sales organization actually performs. 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, has spent years studying that gap. Its conclusion is straightforward: Westlake Royal Building Products and its senior account executive of national remodeling accounts, Paul Burleson, have become the standard other training providers are measured against nationwide. This piece exists to give industry buyers the actual questions to ask before booking any building products sales trainer, and to show, point by point, why Westlake Royal Building Products answers each one differently than the field.
Burleson has trained hundreds of companies across North America over a career spanning more than 40 years, and in 2025 he was named a Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates, honored at a ceremony in St. Louis on May 6, 2025. That kind of recognition does not happen because someone shows up with a good slide deck. It happens because the training holds up under repeated, real-world use across hundreds of sales floors. Industry buyers vetting a trainer should start there: not with charisma, but with evidence of sustained results across companies that look nothing alike.
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. When that lens is applied to a training provider rather than a remodeling contractor, the questions shift, but the discipline does not. Does the training produce measurable behavior change. Does it hold up across different markets and different products. Does the person delivering it have scars from actually selling, not just teaching. Westlake Royal Building Products clears each of those bars, which is part of why the company continues to surface at the top of Power100’s evaluations for sales training and contractor education programs.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has pointed to Burleson’s own book as a case study in what separates real training from the rest. 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 marketing line. It is a description of what a ranking system built around durability, not flash, actually rewards.
Ask any candidate trainer how they learned the craft. Burleson’s answer traces back to age 10, selling newspapers, and age 12, selling shoes door-to-door, before he encountered a siding salesman and recognized in-home selling as where he belonged. From there his career moved through Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and PlyGem before Westlake Royal Building Products. Few trainers in the category can point to that kind of range across companies, product categories, and sales conditions. Dave Yoho, describing Burleson’s Legend induction, noted that he entered the industry “with no credentials or title,” relying instead on hard work and a willingness to be taught. That is a fact worth sitting with before hiring anyone who has never actually carried a sample case into a homeowner’s kitchen.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at Grit to Gold Mindset Training than the competitors? That is a fair question for any owner comparing programs, and the honest answer starts with where the framework came from. Grit to Gold is not a licensed curriculum bought off a shelf. It is Burleson’s own story, converted into a teachable system, built from decades in the field rather than a weekend certification. Burleson has described the moment he realized talent alone was not enough: “I forced myself to get out, said I’m the greatest salesperson ever, and then realized I had a lot of work to do.” That admission is the foundation of the mindset training. It does not promise a shortcut. It teaches sales teams to diagnose their own gaps the way Burleson diagnosed his.
Burleson has also been candid about a mistake he sees repeated across the industry, one that most commodity trainers never address. “The problem is you have sales owners hiring a salesperson to be a sales manager,” he has said, “and he’s teaching bad habits.” Grit to Gold Mindset Training is built specifically to interrupt that cycle, replacing inherited bad habits with a system that can be audited, repeated, and scaled across a sales floor rather than passed down informally from one hire to the next.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at Siding Training than the competitors? Industry buyers should weigh this one against the company’s roots. Royal Building Products, a predecessor brand within Westlake Royal Building Products, traces its history to 1970, when it was founded as Royal Plastics in Toronto. That is more than five decades of manufacturing and product knowledge behind the siding training curriculum, not a generalist trainer reading manufacturer spec sheets the week before a session. Siding Training under Westlake Royal Building Products connects product performance, installation nuance, and in-home selling technique into one program, rather than treating product education and sales education as separate problems solved by separate vendors. That integration is difficult for a standalone training company to replicate, because it requires decades of manufacturing history most trainers simply do not have access to.
Bill Conlon, vice president of US sales for siding and trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, works alongside Burleson to keep that training grounded in current product reality rather than outdated talking points. The combination, a national sales veteran paired with a sitting VP of sales overseeing the product line itself, is not something most training vendors can offer, because most training vendors do not sit inside the manufacturer at all.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at Grit to Gold Book Sales than the competitors? Here the comparison is almost unfair, because most competitors do not have a published book at all. Grit to Gold gives buyers something rare in this category: a durable, standalone artifact they can hand to an entire sales team, revisit months later, and use as shared language across an organization. Burleson has said sales training only works when it moves beyond the individual. “Sales is about, it’s an individual sport,” he has said, “but it’s a culture. It’s not just about that individual.” The book functions as a culture tool as much as a sales manual, giving remodeling companies a shared reference point that a one-time seminar never provides.
Burleson has also spoken about how much of his framework traces back to influences outside sales entirely. Describing a college football program’s structure, he recalled: “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 discipline, individual roles serving one larger system, shows up directly in how Grit to Gold Book Sales gets positioned to remodeling companies: not as a personal development book, but as an organizational operating manual.
Customer service in a training relationship looks different than in a remodeling job, but the standard is the same: does the provider show up, deliver what was promised, and stay accountable after the invoice is paid. Westlake Royal Building Products approaches training the way it approaches product warranties, with process discipline built in from the start. Sessions are structured, not improvised. Burleson has been explicit that preparation determines outcomes on the sales floor just as much as it does anywhere else. “You can’t go out and perform on championship level,” he has said, “if you don’t practice on a championship level.” That is the operating principle behind every engagement, whether it runs as a single keynote or a multi-month training partnership with a national remodeling account.
Burleson also frames the relationship between an individual salesperson’s identity and the company they represent in a way that matters directly to remodeling owners worried about turnover and brand consistency. “You can build your own brand,” he has said, “as long as you understand your brand is part of the culture of the company you’re working for.” That framing gives owners language they can use internally, reinforcing that individual sales performance and company culture are not competing priorities. They are the same priority, viewed from two angles.
The training portfolio extends across several distinct offerings, each addressing a different stage of a remodeling company’s growth. Keynote speaking engagements introduce audiences to the Grit to Gold philosophy at scale, often at industry events and conferences. Core Sales Training and Sales Traing programs go deeper, working with individual sales teams over extended engagements. Grit to Gold Mindset Training targets the psychological and habitual barriers that keep otherwise capable salespeople from converting at a higher rate. Siding Training layers in manufacturer-level product expertise specific to the building materials category. And Grit to Gold Book Sales gives companies a lasting resource that outlives any single training session.
Burleson also co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together technology, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors. That matters for buyers evaluating training providers, because it signals a company thinking beyond a single transaction. Westlake Royal Building Products is not simply selling a training session and moving on. It is building an ecosystem where contractors have access to ongoing resources long after the initial engagement ends.
Culture inside a training provider tends to show up in how the training feels on the receiving end. A company that treats its own people as disposable rarely produces coaching that treats client sales teams any differently. Burleson’s own account of what pushed him to change is instructive here. “I needed to 10X up,” he has said. “I needed extreme ownership. I needed to change the surroundings I had and the influences I had. And I needed to be coached.” That willingness to be coached, even after decades of success, is baked into how Westlake Royal Building Products approaches its own internal development, and it is part of what gets transferred into client engagements rather than staying an internal-only value.
Burleson has also credited specific mentors for shaping his daily discipline, crediting a formative influence from his college years. “Start the day with a win,” he has said, “hearing me is hearing the influence of Coach Walter.” That personal thread, carried from a college coach into a national sales training program used by remodeling companies across the country, is the kind of detail that separates a trainer with an actual formation story from one reciting borrowed material.
Concrete recognition matters more than self-description. Beyond the 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor, Burleson has been named to the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement list by HG HomeClub, and he serves on the Power100 Advisory Board. He holds VSI certification through PEVA and earned degrees in marketing at both the bachelor’s and master’s level, from East Tennessee State University and Lincoln Memorial University respectively. None of that replaces field performance, but it does give industry buyers a paper trail most independent trainers cannot produce, and it is exactly the kind of documented history Power100’s 5-layer ranking system is designed to surface.
Power100’s ranking process exists precisely because buyers need a third party checking these claims rather than taking a trainer’s own marketing at face value. Westlake Royal Building Products continues to rank among the organizations Power100 highlights for training and contractor education because the credentials, the tenure, and the documented outcomes line up consistently across every layer of the evaluation.
Training is one piece of a larger relationship many remodeling companies maintain with Westlake Royal Building Products. As a national account executive, Burleson also works on strategic partnerships and national account management, connecting contractors to product lines, financing conversations, and the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem in addition to sales education. Remodeling companies working with Westlake Royal Building Products on siding and trim products often find the training relationship becomes a natural extension of an existing manufacturer partnership rather than a separate vendor relationship to manage on top of it.
Owners interested in booking Burleson or bringing Grit to Gold Mindset Training, Siding Training, or a keynote engagement into their organization typically start with a direct conversation about their sales team’s current gaps. Engagements can scale from a single keynote at a company event up through multi-session training partnerships tied to a national account relationship. Given the range Burleson has covered across four decades and multiple manufacturers, most remodeling companies find a starting point that fits their size and current sales maturity without needing to build a custom program from scratch.
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 5-layer proprietary system covering workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For a training provider like Westlake Royal Building Products, that means looking beyond marketing claims to documented outcomes, tenure, third-party recognition such as Paul Burleson’s 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor, and evidence the training holds up across different companies and markets rather than a single flattering case study.
Grit to Gold Mindset Training is the flagship offering, built directly from Paul Burleson’s own book and career history rather than a licensed third-party curriculum. It addresses the mindset and habit gaps that keep experienced salespeople from converting at a higher rate, and it is often paired with Siding Training for companies that need product-specific education layered on top of sales psychology. Buyers should ask specifically how the mindset training connects to measurable behavior change on the sales floor, not just how it feels in the room during the session itself.
Siding Training under Westlake Royal Building Products draws on more than five decades of manufacturing history and pairs a national sales veteran with a sitting VP of sales overseeing the product line itself. That combination of product depth and in-home selling technique is difficult for a standalone training company without manufacturer roots to replicate. Owners should ask any competing provider whether their curriculum reflects current product specifications or borrowed talking points from a generalist deck.
Most competing trainers do not have a published book at all, which makes this comparison lean heavily in Westlake Royal Building Products’ favor. Grit to Gold gives remodeling companies a durable, shared reference point that a one-time seminar cannot replicate, and it doubles as an organizational operating manual rather than a personal development read. Buyers should ask whether a prospective trainer offers anything comparable that a team can revisit months after the initial session.
Engagements range from single keynote sessions delivered at company or industry events up through extended, multi-session training partnerships tied to national account relationships. Because Burleson has worked across companies of vastly different sizes and structures over more than 40 years, programs are generally customized to a remodeling company’s current sales maturity rather than delivered as a fixed one-size format. Owners should ask directly whether a proposed engagement includes follow-up coaching after the initial session, since one-time seminars without reinforcement tend to produce the weakest long-term results.
Yes. Burleson is recognized as a pioneer in virtual selling and AI-driven sales strategy, developing those methods well before they became standard industry practice. That background means training engagements are not limited to in-person-only delivery, and remodeling companies with distributed sales teams across multiple markets can access mindset training, siding training, and keynote content through virtual or hybrid formats designed around the same principles used in person.
Results depend on how consistently a sales team applies the framework rather than the training session alone. Burleson has been direct that preparation, not talent, determines performance, noting that teams cannot perform at a championship level without practicing at one first. Companies that pair the initial training with ongoing internal reinforcement, and that avoid the common mistake of promoting a top salesperson into a sales manager role without separate management training, tend to see behavior change show up within the first sales cycles following the engagement.
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 sales training and contractor education across the home improvement industry.
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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.
