Error opening terminal: xterm-256color

After opening a remote ssh session to Lion and Mountain Lion clients and attempting to launch pico (I know, I know, "real men use vi") I get the following error:

"Error opening terminal: xterm-256color"

Here is the fix (must be run from Terminal on the machine itself):

• Open Terminal
• Type "pico ~/.profile" (if it doesn't exist go ahead and create it)
• Enter the lines:
• TERM="xterm"
• export TERM

• Exit and save

ssh to the computer again and when you launch pico it should now open