Shifting from Reactive to Proactive:

A Guide for IT Resellers

Read time -2.5 minutes

Introduction

Imagine you’re on a river with your kids in a red canoe. 

It’s a beautiful day.  The sunlight is dancing off the leaves in the trees.  The water is chilly and moving fast.

Up ahead, you spot a large rock. 

What do you do?

Acting early, you steer clear. 

But what if you waited too long? 

Panic, a capsized canoe or worse.

While we might not be canoeing anytime soon, we face situations like this all the time.   

Especially in business.

Acting proactively versus reacting at the last minute can mean the difference between success and disaster.

Connecting a Reactive Environment to the Stress Response

 Nobody likes to be stressed out.   I certainly don’t 

A chronic reactive environment is extremely stressful and most people don’t know how to put on the brakes.   

Some people actually thrive on the excitement of rapid unpredictable change, but is it sustainable?

Studies show that when we’re stressed, our bodies go through specific changes:

• Chronic low-level stress keeps the HPA axis activated, much like a motor that is idling too high for too long.  
• Cortisol continues to be released and leads to burnout and contributes to health problems.
• Persistent epinephrine surges can damage blood vessels and arteries, increasing blood pressure and raising risk of heart attacks or strokes. 
• Elevated cortisol levels create physiological changes that help to replenish the body’s energy stores that are depleted during the stress response. 
• Over time cortisol levels contribute to the buildup of fat tissue and to weight gain. 

 

“Research suggests that chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction.”

Yikes.  

[Reference: Harvard article on the stress response]

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response

Stress is not only harmful for our minds and bodies.  It degrades our performance and relationships with ourselves, our teams and our customers. 

Dealing with stress

There are lots of ways to deal with stress, some are healthy, some aren’t.  (like chronic drinking to numb pain)   

Here are some positive ideas of how to deal with stress

• Prayer
• Exercise
• Going for walk
• Positive visualization
• Deep breathing
• Reciting positive thoughts and verses
• Yoga
• Getting outside
• Sharing what’s going on with an encouraging friend

But what about avoiding stress all together?   

Remembering the canoe analogy above….

What if we could turn our canoe, 100s of yards before the rocks and avoid disaster?

While we can’t control everything…nor should we, we can try to foresee future problems.

There is often an opportunity to work proactively to create a better experience for our customers, colleagues and quite frankly ourselves.   

The impact of a reactive vs proactive posture is seen all over our business.

Customers and employees regularly talk about your business online – it might be your product, your work environment or your culture.   

The comments and reviews affects:

• Our ability to get business
• Generate leads 
• Attract and retain the best talent.  

Consider this example from G2Crowd and Salesforce.   You can see a proactive vs. reactive mindset at work as the user explains their experience.

 

Developing a Proactive Culture: Key Questions and Next Steps

To start thinking proactively we need to start asking ourselves different questions and carve out time to work on the business, versus in the business.

Michael Gerber wrote a few entrepreneurial books, 2 of which are the E-Myth and E-Myth Revisited.   

It was the story of a person who loved to bake.

This person starts her own business.

She soon hates baking and the business is running her life.

She finally gets coaching to work on the business, not in the business.

But what does work on the business mean?

Looking Down

“As leaders we have a responsibility to become like engineers and look down on our business every now and then as if it is a machine, and figure out how and why we are doing the work we are doing – and where we are going.”

Asking Questions

We also need to look ahead and start to questions

• Where are we going and what will it look like when we get there (vision)
• What kind of people do we want to work with (core values) 
• What do we want our product to stand for (product values) 
• What do we want customers to say about us? (core values and brand)
• Where are we today, what do we need to acknowledge (current reality)
• How can we start today and start to create this vision? (focus projects or rocks)

We also need to ask

• What does a bad customer experience look like?
• What dangers lie ahead? 
• What could break?
• What changes in the market are emerging?
• How could we counter these now?

Actionable Steps for Channel Partners to be more proactive

Here are some steps for channel partners to be more proactive and work on the business:

• Taking time out to write out a clear vision of what you want your business to look like within a certain period of time.  It can be long.  It can be short.   Just write it down.
• Write down your core values.  What kind of people do you want to attract and retain, and how would you describe their behavior when no one is watching them?
• Hiring.  Who might you hire over the next 12-18 months?  It doesn’t need to be perfect.  Just write it down and have something you can debate and start to recruit for.
• Customer value.  Where are your customers going, are you talking to them about what projects, objectives or capabilities they are considering 12-24 months out?  
• Strengthen OEM/vendor relationships.  What partnerships do you have and which ones do you want to grow, and how can find a niche value within that partnership or via connected partnerships that make you unique.

Renewal management best practices to be proactive vs. reactive:

Here they are in no particular order…

Proactive Strategies	Reactive Strategies
Organize contracts and assets in a central repository	Contracts scattered across systems and laptops
Automate renewal quotes at initial deal closing	Manually review closed won deals, look for renewable SKUs, manually create a renewal quote.
Run renewals reports 180+ days before renewal	Last-minute renewal assessments <60 days
Integrate asset and end-of-life data to add in asset planning	Disconnected asset and lifespan management
Ask customers far in advance what they want to do with their assets: refresh, renew, consolidate, etc	Limited customer involvement in asset management
Offer renewal and upgrade options simultaneously	Separate or delayed upgrade propositions
Set expectations  with OEMs regarding quote format and SLA response to quote requests	No definition or shared success between you and your OEM partner
Continuous team training on products	Infrequent or reactive product knowledge updates

Conclusion: Small Habits, Big Wins

Start with one small change to develop a proactive mindset. 

It could be as simple as:

• asking more questions
• adjusting a single process
• setting aside time for strategic planning. 

These small steps can lead to significant business improvements and lower the stress for you and your team.

And get you more results as a bonus.

How you can support us?

1. If you are in the channel, an OEM, VAR, MSP or Distributor and care about renewals, sales, sales operation or service – we would love to talk to you.  We are conducting research to better understand the problems and opportunities all around how OEM, Distributors and Channel Partners work with each other to quote and renew product, and use that data to recommend new things.   Here is how you can book a short call with our founder.

2. If you are interested in our beta launch, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss your priorities and see if Owlytica can help you.   Our product is fully built with quoting – contracts – asset management – customer portal and renewals, and was used to run Reliant Technology, before Reid sold the company in 2022.  The development never stopped since the exit and now has more automation and advanced capabilities to serve the channel.