<p>The clientelism literature has focused on vote and turnout buying while remaining virtually silent on face-to-face communication between brokers and voters. This prevents scholars from fully understanding the strategies of clientelist parties and the strength of democracy in clientelist systems. We theorize why persuasive rhetoric, a key component of deliberative democracy, might advantage party machines beyond the use of bribery. We test this theory through three approaches. First, we analyze the content of audio recordings of simulated campaign appeals from Nigerien brokers. Second, we use the appeals as experimental treatments, randomizing the rhetorical elements they contain and asking citizens to rate their persuasiveness. Third, a conjoint experiment tests whether party elites prefer persuasive brokers. Results show that broker rhetoric is more programmatic than often assumed, yet has limited persuasive power. We also find that elites value other broker attributes over persuasiveness. We conclude that brokers talk to citizens about much more than just money for votes, but that persuasion is not a central or especially effective strategy in clientelist parties.</p>