Wendy Close Prior to joining salesforce.com as a CRM Success Expert, Wendy Close served as a CRM research director in Gartner, Inc.'s research organization for more than 11 years. During her years at Gartner, she developed more than 200 research reports on various aspects of CRM—from sales automation to customer experience management to contact center performance management.   She has spoken at numerous CRM conferences and events, has been quoted on the topic of CRM more than 1,000 times in various journals and publications, and has provided CRM advice to many of the biggest and most successful companies in the world. Most recently before joining salesforce.com, Wendy was Gartner's lead analyst on CRM strategies, technologies, and suppliers for midsize businesses, midsize divisions of the large enterprise, and small firms.