What's the count

[rbmartin]

When I was pretty new at this, I lost track of the count quite often. As JJ said, you lose credibility.
For me, most of my problem was due to being overly dependent on my ball/strike indicator. Since then I try to not even look at my clicker, although I still work with one.
Verbalizing it frequently helps a lot. Any time I am 2 pitches or more into the count, I loudly verbalize before every pitch and incorporate the strike count into my call (ie. TWO!!!)
Also, when you are BU, keep count as well and have previously determined hand signals which HP can request help from you without the spectators knowing the count was lost.