Regional Sales Florida = RSF

I need to count the number of times €œRSF€� appear in 3 ranges. Im using the
below formula to do it.

=COUNTIF($I$51:$I$253,B41)+COUNTIF('TSection'!$I:$ I,B41)+COUNTIF('BSection'!$I:$I,B41)

The problem is that the data appeared on the cells as Regional sales Florida.

How can I combine countif and Vlookup to get a result?
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Juan Carlos