Nearly eight years ago, Crissy Burton, a single mother of two young children, walked into a Nissan dealership with a credit score below 400 and little hope of getting financing for a car. A few hours later, she drove out with a new Nissan Altima and the beginnings of a new career.
Now she is a nationally-renowned auto sales leader – best known as Crissy the Car Fairy – who sells up to 73 cars a month.
It all started after a positive experience at Ed Martin Nissan of Fishers in Indiana, where a dedicated salesperson got Burton the financing she needed to get her dream car, which she proudly named Cherry. After posting about her positive experience on social media, Burton sent five new customers toward the salesperson.
In return, he called Burton back into the dealership for a referral check. When she arrived, he introduced her to the sales managers. This time, she left the dealership with a job.
With no automotive experience, Burton started as a sales assistant, scheduling appointments and following up with customers. At the time, she was working as an underwriter at a mortgage company and getting out from behind a desk excited her. In her first week she helped sell 13 cars. Not long after, she was promoted to salesperson and quickly became a top performer.
Burton has a natural gift of customer service and excels in building relationships. In fact, she prefers to think of herself as a customer relations professional, not a salesperson.
She specializes in customers with subprime credit and spends the same energy and resources on each of them as the salesperson who introduced her to the business.
“People come to me with interesting situations,” Burton said. “If I can help them, I’m going to go hard to help them. If I can’t, I’m going to give them a blueprint to figure it out.”
That is how Burton became the Car Fairy, a name given to her by a customer who called Burton’s hard work and customer service “magic.”
She develops long-term relationships with her customers and their families. One family has bought eight cars from her in three years. The father of the family bought the first while going through personal bankruptcy. Through his vehicle financing, he was able to rebuild his credit. Three years later, he has been able to buy a house and a new Chevrolet Silverado. Burton also sold vehicles to his wife and two children.
She said it’s not unusual for her to become the appointed salesperson for an entire family.
“I have genuine passion for this,” Burton said. “I’m helping people and being rewarded for it.”
That reward has changed her family’s life. In her previous career, she made enough to keep her family afloat. Now, her three kids are in private school. They take vacations across the world. And she performs at the level where she can set her own hours, which means she can pick her kids up from school and day care each day.
Despite the positive experience Burton has had, she is not surprised that women remain underrepresented in automotive retail. Her solution – more mentorship. She thinks the turnover she witnesses in young female employees can be prevented if they are offered more support and mentorship from their colleagues and managers.
Burton has stayed in touch with the salesperson who sold her the Nissan Altima eight years ago, even after she moved dealerships. He has become her mentor and best friend and has provided support and advice when she has had career challenges.
This, Burton said, is proof that men can be mentors to women – they just need to step up.
Burton is stepping up, too. Through her social media presence, she has built an online community of women in automotive retail, where she becomes their virtual mentor and counselor. One woman started following Burton’s accounts two years ago and reached out to ask to “shadow” her. Now she sells over 20 cars a month and still stays in close contact with Burton, who she calls “Coach.”
Burton is proud of her consistently high rankings in national sales, but at the end of the day, everything comes back to the customer for her.
“If I sell one car this month, I’m still number one,” she said. “Because I impacted someone’s life.”
