Robert, a salesperson with a friendly personality, always smiles while delivering presentations to prospective buyers of his product. He says he uses smiling to communicate the idea that he is a friendly, helpful salesperson. In terms of the communication process, translating this idea into a smile is his way of:

 Encoding

Explanation:

Encoding in terms of communication pattern is defined as generating the meaning of message that a person wants to convey through symbols so that audience or other person can get to know idea of message.Concept gets communicated through this process.

According to the question, Robert is using his smile as encoding medium through which he tends to display and communicate his friendly nature as a salesperson. Communication after smile symbol helps the other people understand the concept .