Bouncing Ball Collisions

I have a bunch of objects on screen that are all set to bouncing ball movement. When they collide, they bounce off of each other.

That's all good but I was wondering if there was a way that I could get them to bounce a little bit before they actually hit. In other words, I want them to bounce when they are getting close to the other object, but not when they actually hit the other object.

I thought about setting up a collision box by using another active object and making it invisible, but there are so many objects on screen at once that this doesn't seem like the most efficient approach. Is this the only way or is there something easier I could try?