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An intelligent person reacts to this by selectively ignoring, filtering, and rounding-down the sales-talk as the salesman is talking to you. You ask specific questions in such a way that he can't fudge it, you focus on specific concrete facts.
A stupid person reacts to this by refusing to interact with salesmen at all. He is incapable of filtering in real time, so he just shuts the whole thing down.
And, to a large extent, just as advertising budget is actually correlated with product quality in most cases, a professional sales presentation is correlated with a high quality product in many cases. Refusing to engage with salesmen opens one up to a different sort of self-scam I frequently see the proles around me fall for: the bargain that is a money pit. They buy a series of broke down cars out of someone's driveway because they don't trust stealerships, they buy a "fixer upper" house because they don't trust realtors, they half ass and jury rig all kinds of stuff around their house because they don't trust contractors, etc.
They can in fact fudge anything that isnt legal writ, and sometimes also not stuff youll notice within a week or so of buying it. Asking question can help when youre buying something like insurance, which was your example above, but for most stuff its "as seen".
"The salesman himself is radioactive" seems like a different thing that youre tacking on there. But if youre selectively ignoring the supermajority of what they say, that is "cynical suspicion" by any reasonable use of the word.
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