I think your question is based on a false premise, that agents of German authority weren't working to recruit Soviet collaborators and that collaboration wasn't widespread. The Nazis used a wide array of rhetorical appeals and coercive tactics to get Soviet citizens to work for them. The question is was there room for more flexible policies to attract support, on one hand, and more collaboration, on the other? I would argue no to the first - Nazi policy was radicalized to the point that there was little room for better treatment. On the second I'd also say no, but more tentatively. While the scale of collaboration was indeed quite large, there were few latent supporters after the first wave of recruitment in 1941 - by 1942 the Nazis were struggling to attract enthusiastic volunteers for programs.

Nazi decision making was built around a progressive push towards more radical decisions. More aggressive, radical officials got noticed and promoted faster, and in turn implemented more radical and brutal policies. Occupation policymaking in the Soviet Union is no exception to this. Herman Backe rapidly rose to power in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Office of the Four Year Plan (Responsible for the war economy), supplanting his predecessor Darre. He then proceeded to implement and enforce radical policies, even going against his former patron, Herman Goering. Some German officials advocated for more moderate agricultural policies to win over peasants or encourage Ukrainian nationalism, but they were a small minority and the major power brokers in Eastern policy - Backe, Koch, Himmler, and Goering - all operated under the same general framework.

The food supply issue in the Soviet Union emphasizes this divide. Some midranking officials in Reichskommisariat Ukraine wanted to use the abolition of the hated Soviet-era collective farms and loosening restrictions to win over the countryside. This policy actually proved effective in mollifying resistance in Northwestern Russia, where low output and isolation limited German interference in local affairs. In Ukraine, however, this was unacceptable. Nazi agricultural planning feared a redux of the First World War, where starvation undermined the German home front. As a result, extracting the maximum amount of food was of the greatest priority. Slavs, being an inferior race, did not deserve food unless they were essential workers, and agricultural areas needed to be exploited to the greatest amount possible. As a result, ideologically German policy was funneled into a narrow range of options which revolved around how much to murder and exploit Russians and Ukrainians rather than if they should. Thus, Nazi ideology from the start precluded moderation.

Up to 1953 the Soviet state prosecuted 618,000 citizens for two specific kinds of treason (Treason "against the motherland" and "helping the German occupiers"). 80,000 civilians occupied important positions - policemen, mayors and village heads, etc -in Belorussia (Modern Belarus). Between 117,000 and over 251,000 Soviet soldiers defected to the Nazis during the war. However, this is only the lower limit of collaboration. More collaborators were prosecuted after the death of Stalin, even into the 1960s and 70s. Some fled to the West or hid and thus escaped prosecution. Others were charged for different, lesser crimes than treason, depending on their role in the occupation. Collaboration, in the broadest definition, can fall into three categories. One, those who were integral parts of the German administration, just the policemen and mayors mentioned above. Two, those who assisted in the occupation in material ways but were not an official part of the apparatus, like those denouncing Jews, helping repair industrial enterprises, etc. Third, anyone who was involved in government or enterprises that might have been tainted by the occupier, even if their help was insignificant - teachers, translators, administrators in non-genocidal parts of government like trade, etc. The third category, by far the broadest, was punished in arbitrary and uneven was. In early 1942, for example, a woman was shot in Kalinin for working as a cleaning lady in the house of a German officer. After the April and November 1943 state guidelines were issued on collaboration people in the third category were punished less harshly or not at all, but arbitrariness remains.

The third category demonstrates that collaboration shouldn't necessarily be considered a referendum on the Soviet regime. While the Germans had a substantial core of supporters who actively sided with them, the vast majority of people were wary of either side. They only marginally collaborated to the degree necessary to survive and weren't particularly drawn to anti-Jewish/Soviet rhetoric. This is of course a blanket statement, and you'll find regions with more active support for the Nazis than the norm as well as below average numbers. By and large, however, there wasn't a pool of potential supporters for the Nazis to tap beyond those who already sided with them. People made up their minds in 1941 based on factors much more local than large-scale Nazi policies which were often outside of their knowledge and understanding until much later in the war. By the beginning of 1942 the Nazis largely failed to recruit voluntary laborers as workers in Germany and as a result switched to forced conscription and slavery to make up the difference.

To conclude, Nazi ideology ran towards only the most brutal and radical policy positions in regards to the Soviet Union. These alienated the population over time and discouraged cooperation. At the same time, however, there was limited slack for greater collaboration among the population. Most people were ambivalent to the Nazi and Soviet causes and chose to walk the safe path - there wasn't significant space for greater collaboration than what already occurred historically.

Sources:

Berkhoff, Karl C., Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule

Edele, Mark, Stalin's Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler's Collaborators

Enstad, Johannes D., Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II

Exeler, Franziska "The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union"

— “What Did You Do during the War? Personal Responses to the Aftermath of Nazi Occupation"

Gerhard, Gesine, "Food and Genocide: Nazi Agrarian Politics in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union"

Kay, Alex J., Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941