The tactics they use would NEVER work now

In an age of instant information-gathering on just about ANY subject/person you can think of, no modern-day salesman would ever succeed with the outright blatant lies these guys spewed from their mouths.
The one that took the cake was Roma's last ditch effort with Mr. Links. He tells him Shelley is the "Vice President of American Express Europe", are you KIDDING me?!? Someone tells me that and I think to myself, 2 minutes Google search tops, photograph and all.
This was a great acting montage, a brilliant sequence of monologues delivered by brilliant actors. But I really should have watched this in the days before the Internet took full form (there was kind of an Internet in the '80s called Arpanet, but it was restricted to Universities mainly).
I find the sales methods completely unbelievable.