Partnerships
The Revenue Relationship Bank
Every interaction with a partner is a deposit or a withdrawal. The math is brutally simple — and almost no one runs it.
Most B2B revenue conversations start in the wrong place. They start with the deal.
The deal is a transaction. Transactions are records of value exchange after the fact — and trying to optimize for them is like trying to drive a car by staring at the speedometer. You’ll eventually crash, because that’s not where the road is.
The road is the relationship. And the way I think about relationships, every single interaction is either a deposit or a withdrawal in what I call the Revenue Relationship Bank.
The model in one paragraph
Every time you interact with a potential partner, you are either adding to the goodwill account or subtracting from it. Sending a thoughtful intro? Deposit. Following up with a question that respects their time? Deposit. Pinging them with a mass-templated cold email? Withdrawal. Asking for a favor before you’ve ever offered one? Withdrawal — and a big one.
The account compounds in both directions. Most people think they’re at zero with a new partner. They are, in fact, slightly negative — because the act of asking takes energy from the relationship before any work has been done.
Why this matters
If you accept the model, two things follow that change how you operate:
First, you stop treating “the ask” as the unit of relationship work. The ask is the withdrawal. The work is everything that comes before — the introductions you make for them, the events you invite them to, the times you check in with no agenda.
Second, you stop measuring partnerships by deals closed. You start measuring them by deposits made. The compounding does the rest.
This is a placeholder essay drafted from Brian’s keynote of the same name. The full version goes live as we migrate the long-form Substack archive into this site.