Action Plans is a free add-on for Salesforce.com (from the Force.com Labs) that in a nutshell puts best practices into reusable “task templates”. Task templates can help you create automatic follow ups when your organization receives new donations and normalize the staff’s task generations on new leads.
For example, when I served as the director of resource development of a NPO we had a very organized procedure to follow up on the president’s leads from conferences (you know what I am talking about, all these big stacks of business cards…). Seven days after the conference, the president sends a follow up email to the lead in which he introduces me. Then, I send an introduction email and 14 days after the conference we usually met to discuss all leads.
Action Plans allow your organization to create multiple tasks (independent and/or dependent) for a lead (or other Salesforce.com objects), assign tasks to a specific user, and supports the creation of up to 20 action plans at a time.
