You have to follow through with your threats

 One of the first things you teach to a new shogi player is "You want to make a pawn exchange on the rook's file."  This sets them in the right direction, focusing their attention on using the rook to attack, and eventually being able to rationalize that they can put other pieces on that file to attack with.  This isn't a criticism - this is genuinely good advice that should be given to everyone.

But sometimes beginners take it too literally.

☗歩-24

Gote played too passively. Ideally, sente should already have an overwhelming advantage, given that there's absolutely no way to stop their rook from promoting now, and they can likely get a couple extra pawns out of it.  However, sente learned that the aim of this pawn push is to exchange the pawns on 24, therefore play continues ☖銀-72 ☗銀-48 ☖歩-85 ☗金-78 ☖歩-74 ☗歩-16 ☖金-32 ☗歩-76 ☖歩x24 ☗飛x

Gote didn't even notice the threat, and continued developing according to the way they had been taught to start a game of shogi.  It isn't until many moves later that they realize they should do something about the pawn, but by now it's too late, and while taking the side pawn is still good for sente, we won't see the unstoppable win that this game should have led to - all because sente "knows" that you're supposed to use the rook to trade the pawns on 24 and then play ☗飛-28.

Let's look at another position.

 

 While ☖桂-93 was questionable due to the pawn blocking it, gote is otherwise preparing a pretty strong attack here, with the rook, silver, and bishop all aiming at the 7th file.  ☗桂-77 blocks the potential for the silver or gold to stop a breakthrough, so all gote needs to do is play ☖歩-74 and ☖銀-64 to get ready for the breakthrough.

☖歩-64

Gote has missed the threat they were posing entirely, and in one move has completely shut down their own attack.  By blocking both their silver and their knight with pawns, it will take many turns to rebuild any semblance of an attack on sente's camp.

And finally, just so you know that I'm not just picking on beginners, here's a position from one of my own games.

This was a 3 minute absolute time game on Shogi Wars, so while there will obviously be blunders, I made a pretty unforgivable one.  I attacked the rook, forgetting that my bishop was pinned to my own rook - gote's bishop had plenty of opportunity to take my silver for free, but neither of us noticed, so they simply moved their rook away ... with ☖飛x19+.  My bishop was defending that lance, so while I'll lose my silver, it's fine because two rooks versus a nearly naked king is impossible to lose when I have an untouched anaguma.

☗歩*47???????  Not only that, but several moves later, I actually lost that bishop.

It wasn't forced or anything. I could have run away from that pawn by taking the dragon, but I was so focused on my own attack that I had completely forgotten about the threat that I had set up myself.

Threats that you make are meaningless if you don't follow through with them, and if you make a habit of being too passive in your games, your opponents will definitely notice and simply stop respecting your threats entirely.  While aji - or, potential - is often important to leave on the board, it means nothing if you never actually capitalize on it.