Rokt’star Spotlight: Mark Eckstein
As Rokt continues to unleash its best year yet, we’re taking a moment to highlight some of the Rokt’stars that help their teams thrive by challenging the status quo and working in different ways. Read on to hear about their time at Rokt and what makes them tick both in and out of the office.
Meet Mark
Director of Revenue Enablement, he/him
Can you tell us more about the role of the Enablement team here at Rokt?
Enablement at Rokt breaks into three priorities: reducing time to proficiency, ongoing training, and increasing average team productivity by implementing new best practices. These priorities are crucial to ensuring Rokt’s Go-to-Market teams can scale effectively.
The first priority, reducing time to proficiency, consists of programs such as onboarding and ramp, which last between 5 weeks to 8 months. The objective is to reduce the amount of time it takes for a new Rokt’star to be as productive and proficient in their role as someone who’s been successful here for years.
Each department has different milestones in the employee journey we track against. For example, someone in Business Development would focus on hitting specific revenue and pipeline goals, while someone in Engineering would focus on the speed and quality of the code they deploy. As we reduce the time to proficiency in each role, Rokt’stars are able to, in total, move the business forward at an increased pace.
The second priority focuses on how we ensure our employees transform at the speed of our business. Rokt moves fast, and the company transforms constantly. With many new products, messaging, and strategies being released, Enablement focuses on the best way to ensure the adoption of these new behaviors. This is done through consistent ongoing training curated for each role and in the flow of work, centered around the application of that new knowledge or skill.
The third priority is sharing and scaling best practices. One of our values is “Raise the Bar,” and our Rokt’stars truly embody that value by setting high standards and crushing their goals.
What are our highest performers doing differently? How do we scale what is working well across more parts of the team or the overall organization to increase the average productivity across the company?
Enablement is empowerment. By helping our Rokt’stars understand our solutions, the skills, knowledge, and processes necessary for their roles, we give them the tools to “Raise The Bar” and crush their goals.
What makes you passionate about working in enablement?
Enablement is different at every organization. It’s built upon the understanding of the organization’s needs, the problems they’re looking to solve, and then how you, as a resource with a deep understanding of the business and the roles, can build solutions to help that company scale and achieve its goals.
Because it is so open-ended, you can provide a lot of value and make a significant impact. I love enablement because it’s not rigidly defined. It can take on various forms, and you can support various roles.
October is National Learning & Development Month (L&D). What makes Rokt’s Learning & Development program special?
All Rokt’stars get an allowance for learning & development as part of our LevelUp program, which they can use to invest in their professional growth however they wish. This program is unique because it decentralizes decision-making in people’s professional development and gives Rokt’stars the power and the budget to make those decisions for themselves. Not a lot of companies provide that degree of autonomy for people to make the best decisions for their own careers.
School of Rokt, our internal asynchronous cultural onboarding platform, is also incredibly unique in that it’s a consolidation of Rokt’s best practices and learnings in an easily digestible format, so Rokt’stars can use it no matter where they are in the organization or the world.
You’re also integrated into the L&D Team here. Can you tell us some of the goals that both the Enablement and L&D teams are hoping to achieve this year and beyond?
Our Learning & Development team is relatively new for Rokt, so we’re excited to build scalable learning programs and provide opportunities for Rokt’stars to continue growing (beyond onboarding) so they can achieve their goals and scale over time.
Speaking specifically about onboarding, we’re also looking forward to creating curated programs for the Engineering and Product side of the organization. Lastly, we are developing an internal learning database for ‘everboarding’ to help Rokt’stars continue to develop and grow beyond the onboarding and ramp periods.
What are your passions or hobbies outside of the office?
Long walks in Central Park listening to podcasts. Way too many of them, but it brings me great joy.
What was your favorite band in highschool?
Blink 182!
What Rokt value resonates with you the most?
Raise the Bar – there’s something really appealing to me about working with talented and ambitious people who strive to be the best of the best in their profession. The Rokt’stars I work with inspire me to continue challenging myself.
Want to learn more about Rokt’s L&D initiatives? Check out our employee handbook for more information.