I had an interesting Conversation about Act and Act users yesterday with Matt Patterson.

Matt creates sales proposals for me when I am asked to provide a quote to a prospect or a client. We were discussing how he follows up with contacts on a consistent and regular basis. He has a plan. He also uses Act Smart Tasks to automate some of those tasks.

It was at this point that I mentioned that I’m not a big fan of Smart Tasks in Act. We started to debate the use of Smart Tasks. As the conversation was coming to a close I began to realize is that the main reason that I don’t like using Smart Tasks in Act is because it requires a certain level of organization that quite frankly most of my clients do not have the time to utilize.

In other words, the level of planning and organization that it takes isn’t necessarily worth the amount of time it would take to achieve that level of organization. Here is the Catch-22.

Most of my clients are small business people, solo entrepreneurs or just small enough that they don’t have a lot of time on their hands for sales and marketing. So many Act users try to utilize the software in a way that is most productive and takes the least amount of time. If they use Act to 80% efficiency that might be good enough. To achieve 100% efficiency with the software package such as Act is unlikely and too time-consuming for many small business people.

In Joseph Heller’s famous book, Catch-22, the concept of the Catch-22 becomes clear. Set in World War II, the idea for a Catch-22 was that the young bomber pilot could get out of flying missions if he was crazy. In order for him to advocate for himself that he was crazy, he would have to be sane enough to prove that he was crazy. Therefore, if he could argue that he was crazy he was too sane to be excused from the bombing missions.

For most Act users, the Catch-22 is time versus results.  What are your thoughts?