One of the biggest reasons to NOT do it is the animosity that it causes between the dealerships and their management teams.
Even though the stores share common ownership, each store will have a little bit different "personality" because of the management team that is running them. An example would be as an example a Toyota Camry trade in. My store (Store A) doesn't do particularly well with a Camry unless we own that Camry for Average Trade or below. Store B does well with them, and they know that we own them right. Store B gets those leads, and Store A loses the inventory and more importantly the Finance Income that comes with that vehicle. This seems to happen a few times each month, and now Store A resents Store B because of it.
So what does Store A do? They start booking those Camrys at Clean Book and getting the profit right now because they pretty much know that they are going to lose the unit anyway. Now all of a sudden, that Camry doesn't get any action at Store A because it is priced the same as every other Camry in the market. Store B doesn't want it because they have 4 that they own the same. The Camry now hits overage status, it gets wholesaled, and Store A loses money but more importantly the Dealer Group loses money.
Or, Both Store A and Store B get a lead on the same car. Now what? Store B wants it because they do well with Camrys. Store A doesn't want to give it up because there is an active lead in the system on that Camry. Guess who gets caught in the middle? The Customer.
I know the response is that Store A should bid the Camry for what it is worth, but that is the essence of wholesale values in general. That is the reason the we bid up to $20K on a unit, and 5 guys at the auction laugh because we paid way to much for it. 3 days later we have sold that unit and made strong money on it. Next week at the auction, a couple onlookers from the previous week laughingly ask how we are getting along with our overpriced unit from last week......we sold it 2 days later and never even priced it on our website. It isn't so simple when we are talking about multiple stores in the same market with the same ownership.
Eventually, we just stopped sharing inventory between the stores. Each store could buy inventory from one another with no regard for cost. They could pay what they thought it was worth or what the owning dealership wanted for it. It was just too much drama and headache to do it any other way, and ultimately the owner was better off.
Maybe there is something in this that helps.
