How do I forecast my team's sales when I don't know what will close?

Being handed the team's forecast when you have no idea what will close is a genuinely exposed feeling. You are accountable for a number built out of other people's deals, which you can only see secondhand. That is not a failing on your part. It is the hardest structural part of leading a team, and it takes a system to solve, not just effort. The trouble is you are trying to feel the forecast when you need to interrogate it. You cannot know every deal the way each rep does. But you can ask each of them the same few hard questions, real problem, real timeline, real decision-maker, real budget, and judge the answers. The forecast becomes a set of consistent reads instead of a pile of hopes. Start running your deal reviews around those questions, and separate the deals that pass from the ones that are just wishful. Your forecast is the ones with real signals behind them. You do not have to know every deal personally. You have to ask better questions and trust the pattern of the answers. That is a leader's version of the skill, and it is learnable.