Most of us go through our days reacting to issues, problems, emergencies and fires. A deadline approaches. A customer is upset. A last-minute conference call requires your attendance. A supplier has let you down. Payment is late. Where is that payment?!

This kind of reactive work leaves no room for marketing, which is entirely proactive. It must be planned and executed daily, in short bursts, to the exclusion of everything else. Fifteen minutes of proactively communicating your value to people who can buy it is enough. But it won’t happen on its own. We must make room — physically, in our office, by closing the door and clearing our desks, even if only for a few a minutes; and psychically, in our minds, by requiring that all incoming requests for reaction wait until we are finished marketing.

Marketing is proactive. It requires intentionality. Make space for it regularly to the (temporary, sometimes momentary) exclusion of all else.

This piece ran in my Evangelist Marketing Minute short-form newsletter, which you can receive every Monday morning for free by signing up here.