Every partnership should have kill criteria. Most don’t. The absence of kill criteria is the reason so many partnerships drift from active to dormant to forgotten without anyone formally ending them — and why companies often run five or six zombie partnerships that consume executive time for no return.
Writing kill criteria before you launch is the discipline that keeps partnerships honest.
What Kill Criteria Actually Are
Kill criteria are specific, measurable conditions that, if not met by a specific date, will trigger a structured conversation about winding down or restructuring the partnership.
They’re not “we’ll see how it’s going.” They’re:
- “If joint pipeline is below $X by month Y, we formally review.”
- “If joint-won revenue is under $Z in the first twelve months, we decide whether to restructure or wind down.”
- “If we haven’t had a weekly ops meeting for four consecutive weeks, we escalate to sponsors.”
The specificity matters because specificity creates forcing functions. “We’ll monitor performance” produces drift. “If X by Y, we review” produces action.
Why Companies Resist Writing Kill Criteria
Three reasons, all of them predictable:
1. Kill criteria feel unfriendly.
Announcing a partnership at the same time as committing to kill criteria seems like hedging the relationship. Partners sometimes read it as bad faith. But the companies that insist on kill criteria are usually the ones who take partnerships most seriously — they’re not leaving the program’s fate to politeness.
2. Kill criteria force commercial clarity.
Defining what success means requires agreeing on what success looks like. Which requires agreeing on who owns what, what counts as joint, and how attribution works. Most partnerships defer this clarity because it’s uncomfortable. Kill criteria force the conversation while both sides still have executive attention.
3. Kill criteria create accountability.
Partnerships without kill criteria can fail indefinitely without anyone being accountable. With kill criteria, someone has to make the call. That accountability is uncomfortable — which is why it’s valuable.
How to Write Kill Criteria
1. Set a 90-day and a 180-day checkpoint.
Not just end-of-year. Early checkpoints catch problems while there’s still time to fix them. At 90 days, you’re assessing whether the partnership is running — named operators, weekly cadence, initial joint deals. At 180 days, you’re assessing whether it’s producing — first joint wins, pipeline, revenue attribution.
2. Tie each checkpoint to three specific tests.
At 90 days: is the operational cadence in place? Are there named joint deals? Is pipeline being shared?
At 180 days: has any joint revenue been generated? Is the pipeline growing? Are kill-criteria-triggering conditions present?
3. Name what happens if the criteria aren’t met.
Not “we’ll talk about it.” Specific: “The executive sponsors will meet within two weeks of the checkpoint. The options on the table are (a) restructure the partnership, (b) extend by 90 days with specific revised commitments, or (c) wind down. No fourth option.”
The Most Common Kill Criteria I’ve Seen Used
Across the partnerships I’ve observed running well:
- Operator engagement: if the weekly ops cadence has been skipped 3+ times in 90 days, escalate
- Joint pipeline: if joint-registered opportunities are below a specific threshold at 90/180 days, review
- Joint revenue: if no joint-won revenue has been recognized by a specific date, review
- Strategic drift: if either company’s priorities have shifted such that the partnership is no longer relevant to core strategy, review
Any of these alone isn’t a kill trigger. Two or more at a checkpoint triggers the structured review.
What the Review Should Do
The review isn’t automatic termination. It’s a structured conversation between the operators and sponsors on both sides:
- What’s the root cause of the gap?
- Is it fixable with structural changes (new operators, revised cadence, different joint offering)?
- Is it not fixable (strategic drift, incompatible incentive structures)?
- Based on the answer, what do we do?
Restructure, extend, or wind down. The review forces the decision instead of letting the partnership drift.
The partnerships that run well almost always have kill criteria. The partnerships that run badly almost never do.
This isn’t coincidence. Kill criteria are the forcing function that keeps both sides honest, engaged, and accountable. Without them, partnerships default to theater — because there’s no mechanism that turns a failing partnership into a conversation.
Write the criteria before the press release. If the other side won’t agree to them, you don’t have a partner. You have a logo swap.