[en] The nucleon elastic scattering from targets of ⁴⁰Ca and ²⁰⁸Pb has been studied in the presence of inelastic excitation to a fairly realistic set of levels. A method of averaging over the 1-dependence of the trivially equivalent local potentials has been suggested so as to obtain smooth, surface-peaked potentials which yield cross sections in good agreement with exact results in the forward hemisphere. Only slightly poorer agreement is obtained with potentials from simple, analytical formulae derived from the plane wave approximation. Approximate and exact inelastic cross sections have also been briefly compared. (author)