How to Hire and Train Your Bee

Start with the job your bee should do

Before training a Hivewave bee, decide which partnerships are actually worth having. A skincare brand looking for spa and studio stockists is running a different search from one looking for corporate gifting buyers, and the two need different pitches.

Name the outcome first: the kind of business you want to reach, and what a good first conversation looks like. The sharper the job, the easier the first bee is to train.

Bring the right source material

Your bee needs examples and boundaries, not vague instructions. A strong first training packet includes your catalog and margins, the partnerships that already worked, the ones that did not, your pricing and terms, and any category you will not sell into.

Losses are as useful as wins. Knowing that a whole segment never converts saves your bee from working a list that was never going to answer.

You do not need a perfect brand book to start. A small set of real examples beats a long list of abstract adjectives.

Teach the voice

Voice training covers what your brand sounds like in someone else's inbox and what it must never say. That includes preferred phrasing, claims you cannot make, how much discount or exclusivity a first message may hint at, and when a thread should come to a person instead.

The point is not to make the bee sound generic, or to make a template with the company name swapped in. A useful pitch shows it read the other business: what they stock, who they serve, and why the fit is worth a reply.

Set the approval boundaries

Decide what your bee does on its own and what waits for you. Most brands start with every first message approved, then relax it once the pitches read the way they want.

Be explicit about the edges: how many follow-ups before it stops, how long to wait between them, which accounts are off limits because sales already owns them. Outreach that keeps going after a no costs more goodwill than the reply was worth.

Review and adjust

Hiring a bee is the beginning of the loop, not the end. After the first batch, read the replies: which openings got answered, which pitches got ignored, where the fit was wrong before the writing ever mattered.

The best training process is practical. Start with a small target list, learn from real replies, and adjust weekly until the conversations are worth the follow-up.