For context, I have been working as a consultant in digital marketing (mostly in the Salesforce environment, mostly on Salesforce Marketing Cloud) for the last 7 years. My last job lasted 5 years, and my projects were mostly in the high watchmaking industry. I have a year and a half of unemployment, allowing me to take the time I need. I live in a part of Europe that's very competitive in terms of job demand because of the high salaries possible here.
I am a good technical person, but I know that I'm behind other people in that field in terms of technical knowledge and coding skills. I do believe that I have good people skills; I was often at the front of my projects, as other consultants sometimes struggle with client relations. I also did my fair share of training, where I was teaching a tool or a technique to end users and was often praised for that.
My last project was my most important one, but not a great one. I was working on this project for 3 years and did a lot for the client: I organised the platform, created documentation from scratch, updated the visual design of the emails, implemented numerous multichannel journeys, created a tool for the boutiques, and many more things. The problem was that after 2 years, most of what could be done without additional cost on that platform was already done, but they kept me on it. I never evolved towards a better position because my company was happy to keep me on that account, and my client was happy to keep us in case there would be work to do in the future, and they didn't want to lose the budget.
Now for the advice:
I feel like, with a resume like mine and experience in that field, I should try to get myself into a better position than just a marketing engineer, but I don't exactly know what to look for. I don't have any experience in management, but I feel that's where I would shine better, maybe as a CRM Manager or Customer Experience Manager. But I'm a bit lost. To be honest, I feel like I was surfing on a very low-energy job for a very high pay, and even if I am still good at the technical part, I lacked ambition. What would you recommend to someone in my position? How can I prepare for a job efficiently, and is it smart to try to get out of consultancy work?
Thanks in advance!