Act by Swiftpage has created some great video tutorials on some of their key features in act.  Here is an Act video tutorial on Smart Tasks.

The video below is all about smart tasks in act. I have some strong opinions about smart tasks and how they are used by the average every day act user. In theory I think smart tasks are a great idea. But in practice I believe it sometimes takes more thought and organization than they are worth. In order to use smart tasks effectively you need to have your database organized in a way that can efficiently utilize smart tasks. For most small business people, they don’t always have the time to organize all their data in the best possible manner.

Love your customers. Love your prospects.

I believe automation can be counterproductive when it helps us lose sight of what is truly important. When we over-automate it is  easy to lose sight of the people that we are trying to reach. It is my opinion that you should focus a little bit more on the contacts in your act database and less time automating.

Sometimes automation hurts us more than it helps us.

Act makes it so easy to stay in touch with your clients and prospects that I urge you to consider how much time you’re willing to give to each one of these contacts in your database. How much time are you willing to give to prospects every day, month, quarter or year. Would you be willing to give a prospect two minutes of your undivided attention?

Touch your prospects.  Give your prospects one minute…at least!

My experience has been that most prospects fall into one of a handful of categories. I can show you how to spend one minute with that prospect and send in the most effective email possible based on the type of prospect that they are at that point in time. If you don’t feel a prospect is worth one minute of your time that it seems to me we’ve lost perspective on why we started using act in the first place.

Do smart tasks make us lazy?

As I think you can tell I’m not a big fan of smart task. Having stated that, below is a great video that shows you how they work. My experiences been that you will probably need help in working through this process. I’m just a phone call away.