Tracking multiple Survey Responses with Countif

I work for a sales force that sent out 85 surveys to each of the sales people. Each survey has 15 possible issues with the drop in sales and each sales person was to rank those 15 issues, from 1 to 15, depending on importance of each issue. Is there a way I can take all 85 surveys (Excel spreadsheets) and count how many #1 votes the first issue got, how many #2 votes, etc and do that for all 15 issues. I thought countif would work countif('SHEET1':'SHEET85'!A1:A15,1). This did not work. I thought I would just add this formula for each issue, for each number 1-15, to count how many of each number, each issue received in the surveys. The format for each survey is the same, so all the numbers for each issue are in the same cells on each worksheet. Did that make any sense? Any suggestions?