How do you ensure Leads have open activity depending on status?

[PickeringsLifts]

We wish to make it impossible to let a lead "die" and if it has one of 3 statuses the lead must have an open activity for a date in the future.

We have been told Visual force or apex coding can be used but we are complete novices and don't know where to begin to remedy this.

 We want users to be able to save a new lead record but what we need is a piece of code or altenative solution that next brings up the create a task page which must be completed dependent on the status of the lead.

We do not wish to automatically create tasks with no date or fixed date in place as we believe these may be ignored or simply cancelled.

We have thought of various solutions involving capturing a date of next activity from the leads page and can add custom fields to the activities page but cannot auto create tasks and map the calendar date to the new task.

Can anybody help us in this predicament