Service Drive Revolution with Chris Collins
Service Drive Revolution with Chris Collins

SDR #368: It's Not Traffic... It's Your Techs!

July 20, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Real Problem Isn't Traffic—It's Your Techs

When a service director says "we need more traffic," Chris Collins and his co-hosts have learned to ignore that request entirely. After working with hundreds of dealerships, they've spotted a pattern: the people asking for more customers almost never have a traffic problem. They have a capacity problem, a retention problem, and most of all, a technician problem. And until they fix those, more traffic will only make things worse.

Why Everyone Thinks They Need More Customers

The current market conditions should be a gift for service departments. New car sales are dramatically down. People are keeping their cars longer, driving more because flights have become absurdly expensive, and the average vehicle on the road has more miles and needs more maintenance than ever. "There's never been a better situation for the service drive," Collins notes.

Yet dealerships keep saying they need more traffic. The disconnect, Collins argues, comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually happening in the shop. When a dealership is running at 60 or 70 percent efficiency—which Collins says is now shockingly common for Toyota and Ford stores—leadership assumes the answer is more work. But the math doesn't work that way.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:03) **Opening Advertisements** - Pre-roll ads for AutoTrader and Riverview School.
  • 2 (01:39) **Cold Open & Banter** - Host Chris Collins and co-hosts Hogi and Adam chat about hats, whiskey distilling, and grandfathers' wine.
  • 3 (08:49) **The Core Thesis: "You Don't Need More Traffic"** - The hosts introduce the central argument: when dealers say they need more traffic, they are almost always wrong.
  • 4 (14:30) **The Myth of the Traffic Problem** - The hosts explain why the "need more traffic" mindset is a dangerous misconception.
  • 5 (21:07) **The Missed Opportunity in Maintenance** - The hosts identify a key area for improving efficiency without new traffic.
  • 6 (23:21) **The True Cost of Acquiring New Customers** - The hosts break down the economics of traffic vs. retention.
  • 7 (25:45) **The "Booked Out" Trap** - The hosts explain how being booked out for days is a sign of a capacity problem, not a demand problem.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In this episode of Service Drive Revolution #368, Chris, Hogi, and Adam dig into one of the biggest and most expensive misconceptions plaguing dealership fixed operations today: the constant cry for "more traffic" and "advisor training." The team uncovers the real patterns behind hundreds of service departments and reveals a harsh disconnect—dealerships aren't running out of work; they are failing their technicians and losing their best producers.

Chris and the crew break down why shoving more traffic into a shop running at 60% to 70% efficiency is an absolute recipe for disaster that tanks your customer satisfaction score. We unpack why service advisors secretly refuse to sell work when the shop is backed up, why the industry completely abandoned basic maintenance sales, and how to use the "Theory of Constraints" to treat your shop like a high-output factory.

Plus: Adam talks about his $7,500 journey to becoming a certified master distiller, Chris debates the risks of blind-inducing backyard moonshine, and the guys try to figure out which "I" state they are traveling to next.

🔥 KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Advisor "Self-Preservation" Trap: Why your service advisors stop selling additional work the second your shop gets backed up with poor diagnosis turnaround times.
- The 60% Efficiency Crisis: Why pouring marketing money into driving traffic to a flat-rate shop with low productivity is completely useless without fixing your technician mix first.
- The Real Cost of Lost Traffic: The brutal math showing that it costs between $150 to $300 to acquire a single new customer, making retention the only profitable play.
- The Flammable Flash Point of Grain: Adam shares what he learned at master distilling school, including why the first cuts of ethanol can blind you and how dry corn dust can explode.
- Why "Gross is a State of Mind": How Chris took a BMW store from losing to its competitor by 20 cars a month to beating them by 150 a month, entirely by changing customer psychology and removing decision fatigue.
- The 250-Year Cowboy Hat: Chris talks about hunting down his size for a special edition Stetson hat. 

🛑 SDR Live Academy Online Training For Huge Results: https://chriscollinsinc.com/op/sdr-live-weekly/

🛑 Book your Profit Gap Analysis Now: https://calendly.com/byron-webster/30min

🛑 Best Selling books on making Fixed Ops a money printer: https://chriscollinsinc.com/shop/

🛑 Got a question? Call us at 1-833-3-ASK-SDR

🛑 Want to work with the best? https://chriscollinsinc.com/careers/

🛑 Grab Chris' New Leadership Book I AM LEADER: https://iamleader.com

 

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