EYG Commercial strengthens sales team on back of 30% order book increase

EYG Commercial is looking to build on its most successful year of trading and has appointed two experienced business development managers to secure more high-value contracts and add to its impressive port-folio of work.

Paul Sherman and Chris Murray have close to 60 years’ combined experience in the commercial glazing industry, having worked in a number of senior sales and managerial roles and similar businesses.

Both have been given targets of securing contracts ranging from £50,000 to £3m in value over the coming 12 months, with the company keen to strengthen its long-term order book with many high-value contracts for some of the UK’s leading developers.

The ambitious plans and new recruitment to its senior team follows a hugely successful 2016 for the firm, in which commercial glazing sales were up 30% on the previous year.

“It is very much a case of building on the momentum of the past couple of years at EYG Commercial and securing more contracts of the size and scale we have in recent times,” said commercial director Steve Swallow.

“Paul and Chris join us at a buoyant time and they have vast experience of working on many impressive commercial glazing projects,

“They each have excellent contracts at major developers, and bring invaluable knowledge to the business of the commercial development sector, the opportunities it brings and risks major contracts can pose. They will play a key role in our continued growth.”

Appointments signal growth ambitions

Mr Sherman and Mr Murray will work alongside Bernard Hastie, who has led the business development team at EYG to its most successful sales period over the past two years.

This included a £5.13million deal to glaze one of the UK’s biggest care homes for the St Monica Trust in Bristol last year.

Having most recently worked with EYG’s suppliers ALUK as sales leader, Mr Sherman developed a strong relationship with EYG and was impressed with the firm’s recent growth, its stability and diversity.

“EYG is a great company to be joining as it is a business with the right blend of experience, financial stability and ambition,” he said.

“I’ve obviously developed a good relationship with the senior managers during my time at ALUK, and as a business they are very transparent in the way they work. That was appealing to me.

“I’ve been responsible for running sales teams with turnovers of around £12m a year in the past when I was previously in the sub-contracting sector, and know that the key is not just getting the sales, but also getting the contract details right.

“Hopefully my contacts with some big players in the industry can help us get onto some new supply chains and bring in some significant business. We’ll certainly be targeting the top 20 to 30 contractors nationally and some local businesses also.”

Mr Murray has also been handed a business development role. Having started his career in the construction industry as an estimator before moving on to running small contracts and becoming a sales executive and sales director, he is looking to use close to three decades of experience in the aluminium and construction industry to bring benefits to EYG.

“The aim is to ensure we have a strong order book well into the future, with contracts ranging from £50,000 to £3m, and to get EYG onto the supply chains of the major blue-chips and developers as direct suppliers,” he said.

“It is a very competitive industry, but what impressed me about EYG was its ability to control its own destiny.

“It has its own manufacturing operation, is multi-faceted and diverse, and is very well risk-managed in that it takes on projects where it knows its expertise lies. The business is very well managed and that is evidenced in its recent success.”