One point to note is that you don't necessarily need to explicitly ask their budget, you can ask questions about the size of their operation instead. eg. For an

One point to note is that you don't necessarily need to explicitly ask their budget, you can ask questions about the size of their operation instead. eg. For an IT sale, ask about number of employees in the IT department, number of desktops serviced, tech refresh cycle frequency, server numbers, etc... You can then get a gauge on what their true overall budget is without having to ask for it - as that will possibly be lowballed. A 100 man department with 10000+ desktops to support can probably afford a 6-digit equipment sale, whereas a 10 man dept. with only a hundred users will perhaps be looking at low 5-digits spare on their budget. Similar applies to the authority question. The larger the department/company, the less likely that a huge sale will be authorised by just one individual. Although the contrary can also sometimes be true in this case - very small/new companies may have the directors signing off on all the major purchases.