i need some help with a deadlock situation -

i have a situation where the point of contention is a single table
(rather some row/s in a table, i think).

looking thru the logs and here is what i see -
one process is trying to insert data in the table x and has held
exclusive "page" lock
and the other process is trying to do an update and has also held an
exclusive "page" lock

i have been asked to do a implement a retry thru the application when
this happens but
i would like to prevent or reduce the possiblity of this if there is
some way...

can someone suggest the possible reasons,etc., or what can cause this
to happen ...i check for...
any help would be appreciated..


thanks in advance,
db